EIA Natural Gas Storage Change - Decent Deviation in Trend Direction but

Today at 15:30 GMT (10:30 EST) on Thursday April 5th 2012 the Natural Gas Storage Figures were released from the EIA. They had a bearish Build of +8, a pretty decent number but the spike was quite fast and there was not a continuation. On April 2nd, the active Natural Gas Future Contract NG broke $2.1 which I believe was the low from September 2001, thus making a new decade low. Price prompted bounced from this historic level all the way back to $2.20.

So this may mark a turning point, the historic low has now been taken out, what will happen to this this downtrend in NatGas. Certainly the price was not so willing to continue moving downwards on this quite decent deviation although it was quite a good spike move. Could things go sidewise or is Natural Gas going to make a further push beyond $2.10 perhaps attempting the key $2.00 level. Time will tell, for now there maybe a break with some sidewise action as the winter ends.

Here is the data:

EIA Natural Gas Storage change
Estimates- Median: 34 Average: 34 Low: 25 High: 45
Actual: 42 Prior: 57 No Revisions

Here is a 30 second chart of the May NG contract. It shows how it snapped back all the way to the 78% of the initial sppike move. There was also of bouncing off the pivot as price did tend to move gradually back to the downside, but never took out the initial spike lows...for now at least, perhaps eventually.

Canada Employment Change - Big Deviation, Big Spike and Continuation - like the old days

This Thrusday afternoon, at 13:30 GMT (8:30 EST) the Employment figures were released out of Canada. This data is normally on Friday's but it is Easter tomorrow, it also is normally at 7:00 EST but the BOE was doing there Interest Rate decision at that time so it was good they moved it to the 8:30am slot. Finally also normally NFP is only 90 minutes after this data, so it was good it wasn't today because the Canadian Dollar had time to just trend and continue without any worry of NFP coming along and changing everything in terms of the US DOllar or the Japanese Yen or Risk sentiment in general.

The market had been risk off in general..bad Spanish bond auction yesterday sparked renewed concerns and the Euro extended the sell-off already instigated by the Fed Minutes on Tuesday.

Anyhow here is that Canadian Data:


Canada Net Change in Employment
Estimates- Median: +10.5k Average: +13.2k Low: +5.0k High: +40.0k
Actual: +82.3k Prior: -2.8k No Revision

Canada Unemployment Rate
Estimates- Median: +7.4% Average: +7.4% Low: +7.4% High: +7.5%
Actual: +7.2% Prior: +7.4% No Revision

Canada Full Time Employment Change
Actual: +70.0k Prior: +9.1k

Canada Part Time Employment Change
Actual: +12.4k Prior: -12.0k

Here are some 10 second charts:

The USDJPY which has been selling off since reaching 84.00 on March 15th, did take a turn back up and thus supported further gains on CADJPY.

A rumor of a major European bank in trouble which might need to be nationalised hit the wires about 10-15 minutes after the release, this helped the sell-off in the EURCAD and also made it more difficult for the USDCAD to sell-off. But this was probably just some BS the brokers paid the news wires to send down to the retail side, and it soon washed off and EURUSD bounced back up after hitting a significant fib level at 1.3050.

As this final 1 minute chart on the USDCAD forex pair shows the move developed some good momentum which continued for about 3 hours.

Germany Industrial Production - Data Leak leads to sell off before the release

Today on Thursday April 5th 2012, the Industrial Production figures for Germany were released. The data came out at 11:00 GMT (6:00 EST). This blog entry is included as it shows what is sometimes refered to as "Buy the rumor, sell the news", but often it can be "Sell the leak, buy the news"....and either it shows how good the research departments at the major banks are, or that indeed the information is getting leaked from the Department of Statistics from some underpaid secretary or janitor. Also it does show that the estimates provided to Bloomberg which are used to compose the 'Median Estimate' can also be skewed to provide the wrong forward projection for the release, when elsewhere it is known to be different. Whatever it is, we have no proof other than the proof of the price chart.

Here is the data:

Germany Industrial Production MoM (sa)
Estimates- Median: -0.5% Average: -0.4% Low: -1.9% High: +1.3%
Actual: -1.3% Prior: +1.6% Revised: +1.2%

Germany Industrial Production YoY (nsa wda)
Estimates- Median: +0.5% Average: +0.5% Low: -1.8% High: +2.3%
Actual: -1.0% Prior: +1.8% Revised: +1.5%

As we can see it was much lower. Now from the start of the European session it was very natural to sell EURUSD from its Central pivot point at 1.3160...it soon moved down to the big round number of 1.3100, and quite naturally took out stops there and moved down further into the 1.3080-95 region. However then the further extension from there down to 1.3060 in the 15 minutes leading into the release of the German data was highly suspect and points to early release amoungst an elite few. The data came out and there was no further price reaction, indeed the EURUSD had sold off all it could by that time, and a period of slow profit taking commenced which moved the pair back into the 1.3080 zone.

Here is the chart, the red mark is where the data was released: