Sorry guys, went out last night and been buried today, had no time to write earlier.
Gave some back today as I held my length from my 7.290 avg buy from last night Feb and didn't stop out until we broke the 6.920 support area, but taken in stride as the run has been awesome so far.
Looking at the action, I believe today was massive short fund intervention to protect the larger short they carry as i saw a constant 56 lot offer every penny ALL DAY LONG (56 lots = 2 contracts a day for feb). After market talk to some buddies have more die hard bears turning now as they are starting to see the whole weather/storage situation I have been hammering on them with. For me, nothing has changed as far as my end game expectations from here, I fully expect a full on short squeeze within the next week or so with a massive OI in march, most of which is spec paper short the march leg of the march/april spread. I still believe that spread is going to hurt another fund very badly before it is all over.
The weather continues to be bullish for the next several weeks, with the coldest temps seen in many years coming next week into a wide area of the US and most importantly the population dense consuming regions of the upper midwest and the NE.
Todays storage withdrawal was -179, a little more bullish than expectations, as the market rallied post report, the size came in on the offer and was relentless on the selloff all day. This is what i percieve to be the last stand of this particular fund before the pukings begin. Next weeks storage to me looks like a minimum of -220 based on my weather modeling, followed by a -250/-275 (275 would beat the all time record set in jan of 1997 of -260). What a reversal, we had a yoy surplus of +404 BCF and in 4 weeks will have gone into a yoy deficit with another 40% of winter withdrawals to go!
We won't run out of gas no, but going into deficit IS significant and turns people bullish because of several reasons. First, El Nino is going to be history in another month or so and is barely even classifiable now anyway and that will lead to a much more active Atlantic hurricane basin this year compared to last years benign season thus potentially causing supply disruptions. Second, we saw for the first time last year 2 mid summer storage withdrawals for the first time in history due to summer heat. Well, yoy electricity demand has grown by last count +2.7% and will lead to more peaker gas units being utilized this summer which will reduce the amount of gas we will be able to inject this season making it difficult to get to the comfort level of at least 3.3 TCF before next winter. The forward curve should remain well supported down heremaking the risk/reward of being short down at these levels an upside down proposal.
I know the volatility can hurt bad in this market, but find a way of participating in this epic battle of bull/bear we are fighting at the moment as I believe the bulls will win and win BIG!
Safest and possibly most lucrative way to play is still in the H/J spread, buying the march leg.
Good luck.