I was looking for a vehicle to go long/short natural gas; and found this webpage for the cme futures for natural gas: http://www.cmegroup.com/trading/energy/natural-gas/natural-gas.html The symbol is HH (on Interactive brokers), but this symbol is listed no where on the page and was difficult to find. My questions: 1. Why is the symbol not listed on the web page? Is it not a standard symbol? 2. Is this a good way to trade natural gas with leverage? (good is defined as liquid, low spread, and high leverage) 3. What is a good resource for finding symbols of futures to trade on IB? The CME website itself does not seem to be a good source (unless I am going blind b/c I could not find the effing symbol). (Edit: removed long bias as part of the thread question)
Before you start trading nat gas please make sure you know what a forward curve is. Otherwise you are going to get killed trying to buy it.
I'm getting fcked right now in NG. I was long too many contracts(relative to my account). I got out half of most it. But still held on some and this some is still killing me. Dec'15 contract expires next Friday. I need a miracle at this stage. If not I'll bite the bullet and sell at these low prices..
Future Curve: Future Curve also called Forward Price Curve is the current price for a commodity in a specific location on a specified date in the future. A Future Curve consists of a series of forwarded prices plotted together, reflecting a range of today’s tradable values for specified dates in the future. While it is a key indicator of today’s market sentiment, the forward curve is not a price forecast – it is a set of today’s prices for dates ahead.
It seems a bit of a common sense concept. Could one not assume the market efficiently prices the forward curve? If the Future Curve consistently over-under prices the true price forecast, it would be an easy way to make money for sure. I doubt this is the case.
There are several nat gas contracts out there and if moves quite a bit. You might consider options for your exposure. As for finding contacts, we solved that on the new TT platform...type in the name and we pull them all up for you. See the attached. http://about.trade.tt/