First post.., I was seeing how many people out there trade energy or more specifically natural gas futures with the help of T/A....I have used candle stick charting with various indicators with equities.... but obviously NG has a whole different set of fundamental drivers..., and if there is Merritt in using T/A for the continuous NG futres contract.... what methods do you find work best? Thank you in advance
My guess is that almost everyone uses charts to trade NG. And probably uses as many different techniques as are out there. If that's your question. A better question in my opinion might be why trade NG, a relatively thin trader, when you can trade crude oil, a relatively heavy trader? OldTrader
I have always thought trading hard commodities should be done with fundamental analysis. IMO t/a applies to crowd behaviour and works best where there are large numbers of amatuers involved. With copper, gas, etc. you are dealing with a lot of people who are experts in that field. Of course anything you are trading has many experts but the ratio of experts/amatuers in things like stocks and index futures is much, much higher.
it's always best when there are a large number of experts in a market to trade on fundamentals? because as an uninformed retail speculator you will understand the fundamentals much better than all the experts.
Gas is a very regionally/fundamentally driven market. Definitely TA going on here, but as an earlier poster mentioned, the participants are generally more professionals/end users/producers/suppliers etc. Very competitive. After amaranth, I think fund types have been scared away. Look at the composition of OI in NG vs any other commodities market and you'll see what I mean.
Just interested was all .... thanks for the replys.... Maybe is hould of specified... I know T/A is used in NG trading my ? is in what capacity... For example... I would think that your old western style bar charts with long term pattern formations would not mean much... but candlesticks however, could be used to get a good idea of very short term entry and exit points..... Just always been curious
Natural gas is one of the easiest markets to trade by price alone. You don't need candlesticks (they are just ohlc bars with a visual aid). Thin markets are often good ta markets just harder to execute in. A higher percentage of fa's makes ta easier. Lets get real: TA is just reading price movements (and maybe volume) to find profit opportunities.
what kind of time frames do yu like to view?... daily price bars for the front month?... Would analyzing the current 12 month strip be useful as well?
Im guessing that i should begin studying with candlestick charts in a short term view... maybe monthly chart with hourly bars for the front month