I started buying NG in mid March, lose on futures and make up loss on Puts, then start all over again after a few days. Some times I might end up doing this over 25 times before I find extreme, but using the options, seldom have overall losses unless market stalls for a few days, and occassionally will lose on both. But almost always prem to buy the options.
i agree it goes lower, but too many factors to list will keep it from that kind of level. 1.50 seems about right. i think it breaks to about 1.40ish level by the time we see a floor. a good way to play nat gat right now if you don't want to lose your savings to contango and constant rollover fees, option premiums, etc. is to buy coal equities. ANR, PCX, WLT are all at or near 3 and 5 year lows. i think these return 20-30% over the next 3 months.
that is kinda how I'm planning on playing it.... using options to mitigate some of the loss, just trying to get a "feel" for it. CL was to volatile and expensive for me to trade hoping NG won't be quite so. The downside is the options don't seem to be traded very actively.
Could you explain more what you are doing with the future and puts? A long future is equal to a long call and a short put. Therefore, a long future plus long put is just the same thing as a long call. Probably I am missing the details of what you are doing.
Went flat last week in May contract with final profit taken at 2.158 since I needed to close out May positions. I do feel overly short May contract helped with pop into end of last week through rollover. I will try to resume this trade in the June contract if we can trade back to 2.00 pricing level. I am on hold for now with no positions held. Last week worked out rather well with a good rally into the rollover affect.
I have been trading futures contracts in energy markets for over 5 years and I do watch for patterns in the NG. Contracts that are very directional leading up to rollover can have some good covering moves through rollover. I was looking for some of that effect when I started this trade and the rally was a bit more than I expected last week. I think the price action from last week may get more new buyers involved as NG trades down to 2.00 level or below in the weeks ahead, and that is helpful imo for trading the long side during the next few months.
BTW there is an interview with Charlie Maxwell at http://media.bloomberg.com/bb/avfile/Economics/On_Economy/vRFR1AMFBeQM.mp3 in which he says that - we have not seen the bottom yet - he predicts a triple bottom yet to come, with the last leg down in November when storage will be fullest seasonally - he does see an eventual recovery to the $4 area
Why I think the lows are in: http://www.elitetrader.com/vb/showthread.php?s=&threadid=243932 I may be wrong, but I think being long is a good odds play here.
Natural Gas had a positive day for the first time since 5/24. We'd feel more comfortable in thinking about a reversal and what we believe to be an eventual resumption of a more bullish trend if the Volume had increased. However, given the fact that the UK had a bank holiday, maybe we should just shut up and buy?