Besides the EIA Weekly Storage report, are there any other scheduled events that cause similar moves in the short term market? Really don't want to get blind-sided. I know that weather reports are huge, but I can't seem to find evidence of one single release time that traders are keyed into. Thx
EIA-914 (Monthly Gross Production), while not nearly as timely as the weekly storage report, can re-set supply expectations if a particular field is pumping a lot more or less than the market thought. Depending on trading style, you might also follow daily or weekly CDDs, HDDs (cooling and heating degree days), FERC's nuclear plant outage report, and power burn and pipeline flow estimates. Sometime in 2015 LNG exports from the Gulf of Mexico will also be a closely watched number. As a general comment about weather, unless you enjoy following it closely and have the bucks to spend on private services, you can probably get all you need from the NOAA/NWS websites. The big boys are buying reports from multiple services and some of them even have a meteorologist on staff to interpret and analyze the reports. FWIW, I think the 3-5, and 6-10 day forecasts are updated every six hours. Not sure about the 11-14 day and 15-30 day forecasts. As a longer term trader, price and the weekly storage report incorporate most of what I need to know about the weather. I'll pay closer attention if we're in a period of abnormal and persistent heat or cold or if a hurricane or sharknado are about to hit, but those are infrequent events.
For the sake of being "fully prepared"; the non-farm payroll, ADP, PPI, CPI, GDP, industrial production, capacity utilization, ISM, CPMI, FOMC, ECI, durable goods and the crude oil - EIA are all capable of producing "substantial fluctuation" in NG. The media will talk about inflationary concerns, risk-on risk-off and also substitution of NG for CL and/or HO after-the-fact.
When I was a commercial energy trader in the '90's, we had a staff meteorologist and we also had one the nation's top met forecasting firms on retainer for big $$ to update us to the second on weather. For NG weather and supply are obviously big drivers. Many coal plants have been replaced with NG generating units the past few years especially, so do not underestimate the cooling loads for summer weather. You will NOT beat the commercials in terms of fundamental data - any short term day trader that thinks otherwise is delusional IMHO. If you are swing trading you will be fine as long as you are not fading price moves. We do great with NG spreads on a swing trading basis using strictly price data, especially butterflies and condors in the forward curve ( staying away from the prompt months ).
Thanks for info, this gives me good direction for my continuing education into the fundamentals of the NG market. However I meant for my original question to be more in the context of a daytrading time frame. The 10:30 Thursday announcement causes a huge volume spike and considerable move, at least in the few months I have been following the market. If I didn't know it was coming and was unlucky enough to be in a scalp at that time, i could potentially panic and get all messed up. So I am just trying to research if there are any other "announcement" type events that i should be aware of that may have similar effects in the ultra short time frame, so I can get out of the way. But thanks for the feed back. Bone, it looks like you run good business, i will keep that in mind if i continue to be interested in commodities and look to invest in education. Thx guys
I'm not aware of any scheduled reports that cause sharp price moves like the storage report on Thursday mornings. A significant change in the weather forecast can do the trick, but you already need to be in a "weather market" like this past winter to see rapid and large moves that are tied to the latest outlook.