EIA Natural Gas Storage Change - lower print brings whipsaw but resolves higher.

This afternoon of Thrusday February 2nd 2012 at 10:30 EST (15:30 GMT) the weekly EIA Natural Gas Storage Change Numbers were released. This Natural Gas Future has not been following this economic figure very well recently. This is because the winter has been warmer this year, and storage of natural gas has been alot higher in general than previous winters. Also of course there is more supply due to the Natural Gas being available from phracking shale in the USA. A week or 2 ago, We got a tape bomb news trade when Chesapeake said they were going to cut back on their production because the price was too low, this was as the price of the Active Front-month Natural Gas Future was close to decade lows last seen in September 2001 after the 9/11 attacks.

Since that time the price of Natural Gas rallied a bit but again came down a bit at the end of January, but has stabilized and consolidated. So the market seems a bit more evenly balanced and news trades should start to work better. Although this was a small deviation lower, Nat Gas in the past has been very sensitive to this number. There was an initial whipsaw, but a few minutes later the price did start to rally. Lower prints mean less supply than estimated and this is usually a bullish sign. Here is the figures:

EIA Natural Gaso Storage Change
Estimates- Median: -129 Average: -128 Range: -136 to -115
Actual: -132 Prior: -192

Here is the 1 minute chart of the Natural Gas Future. This is from a spreadbet chart so there is no decimal place:

and here is the 1 minute chart of the stock Chesapeake. It followed the EIA deviation better than the Natural Gas Future did. The Natural Gas Future tends to be very volatile, a bit like....well gas...it seems to sweep over numbers rather steadily run thru them. Perhaps this is why Chesapeake traded better as in high-leveraged Future Contract that whipsaw seen on the Natural Gas Future might have gotten ugly without enough leverage.