Natural Gas Futures - Jul 13 (NGN3)

Feds Investigate Natural Gas Price-Fixing Allegations\n\nFeb 16th, 2013 | By fjgallagher | Category: Lead Articles, Regulation\nAdvertise Here\n\nFederal regulators are investigating irregular price swings in the natural gas markets, according to a story published in the Wall Street Journal recently. Image credit: ***.123rf****\nFederal regulators are looking into volatile price swings in the natural gas commodities market that occurred during the past 12 months in connection with the release of weekly natural gas inventory information, according to an article published in The Wall Street Journal this morning.\n\nEd. note: If you enjoy the content you get here at NaturalGasWatch.org, please take a moment to click on one of the advertisements you’ll find on the right side of the page. Your support will help us keep this site up and running. Thanks, Fj.\n\nInvestigators at the federal Commodity Futures Trading Commission, which regulates the Wall Street commodities trading, detected “suspicious trading strategies around the reports by the U.S. Energy Information Administration,” the WSJ story reported.\n\nThe EIA issues regular weekly reports on the country’s energy inventory, including a report that details the amount of natural gas that is held in storage. The EIA report is viewed as the most accurate gauge of short-term supply and demand.\n\nCFTC investigators believe that commodities traders armed with equipment that lets them execute transactions at extraordinarily high speeds use the capability to create artificial price swings by flooding the market with transactions in the moments before the EIA report is released.\n\nFrom The Wall Street Journal story:\n\nThe CFTC has found that a large proportion of trading volume around the data is being conducted by high-frequency firms, according to people familiar with the matter. One person said that many commercial traders, a category that includes energy producers and consumers, typically avoid trading immediately before and after the data to avoid the swings.\n\nThe EIA publishes a report at 10:30 a.m. EST each week, almost always on Thursdays, that provides an update on the amount of natural gas added or removed from U.S. stockpiles. The figure is widely considered the best gauge of gas supply and demand in the U.S., and typically results in the week’s busiest trading window.\n\nTraders have pointed to unusual trading patterns as recently as last week. In the minute before the EIA report was released on Feb. 7, volume in natural-gas futures traded on the New York Mercantile Exchange spiked to 1,954 contracts after trading well below 1,000 contracts for the majority of the morning.\n\nCFTC Chairman Gary Gensler had told the WSJ in March 2012 that the agency would be increasing its scrutiny of high-speed traders and their ability to influence commodities prices.\n\nTags: CFTC, commodities trading, Commodity Futures Trading Commission, EIA, energy information administration, futures, futures market, Gary Gensler, natural gas, natural gas market, price fixing, price swings, Wall Street

nat gas is a scam by goldman and EIA\ninjection is super bear summers mild\nmaybe goldman can blow up one of the terminals lmaooo\n\nhey goldman as usual you post fake weather reports

If NG can break through $4 today I\'ll add to my DGAZ position to take advantage of a possible surprise injection report tomorrow. The range is so tight, it\'ll have to be above 90bcf. This is a dice roll, considering the last report was 1bcf below consensus. No matter, it\'ll still push closer to that 5 year average we bears have been waiting to hit.