These were the last 2 posts on ng earlier this afternoon:

                NG 1/1/26+            

                                  By metmike - Jan. 18, 2026, 1:42 p.m.            

            Over the weekend, HDDs increased in the forecast because the magnitude of the cold blast late in week 1 is GREATER.

But look what happens after that. Straight down for the last 8 data points. In fact, BELOW the green average line at the end. This is a huge pattern change coming up that will blow out all the frigid air coming down from Canada(originally from Siberia) this week.

The late week 2 pattern is VERY bearish.

The last 12z GEFS run is in purple/left with the previous 3 runs, spaced 6 hours apart. The dashed green average/climatology is slowly dropping now that we have passed the seasonally coldest time of Winter. Each Winter is different. This is a futures market. The amount of near term cold is major but a week of extreme cold, followed by temperatures going back above average is not especially bullish.

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The 12z European Ensemble model below was a whopping +16 HDDs compared to the previous 0z run 12 hours earlier which is pretty dang bullish so the ng market will probably open higher (sharply higher) tonight but the LATE week 2 pattern is still the same......straight down so it's questionable how long this extreme cold near term weather will keep the market up this week. The EE had 2 separate surges of Siberian blasts that spike the HDDs higher. 

                            Re: NG 1/1/26+            

                        By metmike - Jan. 18, 2026, 4:35 p.m.            

The reason for this frigid weather is that the Polar Vortex has become dislodged from it's usual location in the high Arctic.

There it is this Thursday Night with a center just north of Lake Superior but a trough extended deeply into the US.  The colors below show the anomalies compared to average.  The colors in the Polar Vortex are to the very extreme left on the color bar chart below. 

These are the temperatures compared to average on Friday. Note that the center is the coldest color bar possible because the color bars don't go any lower than -33 Deg. F below average.

Some of those places will have highs Friday of  near 40 Deg F  BELOW average!

Sharply higher open!!!

Let's try to see how this huge, surprise higher gap on the price charts looks,  on the polar vortex dropping 1,000 miles farther south on the forecast maps over the weekend).(I contend that we will likely fill it when this cold is dialed in fast, unless it sticks around longer than 10 days).

https://www.marketforum.com/forum/topic/83844/#83851

1. 1 week; Bottom, short red line was the Friday close. Top short red line was the Sunday open. The long red line was Friday's high. The gap between the Fri high and tonights low/open is the DAILY gap higher of over $2,500/contract.  The long red line at the top was last week's high. This was NOT a weekly gap higher but we got $500/contract above those highs earlier and are now just below them.

2. 1 month: After a sharp drop o $15,000/contract in a month,  this could be several things. Potential double bottom last week just above $3. This would be 2+ months early for the seasonal bottom. If this pattern does not end after 11 days, then that becomes more likely. If it does end and we go back to mild, then this will be a bear flag and shorting opportunity as we fill the gap  and likely go back down.

3. 1 year: Alot of stuff going on, including a symmetrical triangle with higher lows(from the August/September lows and last weeks HIGHER lows) and SHARLY lower highs as we dropped $20,000/contract real fast after the blow off top in early December.  

The horizontal line was the fake upside breakout above the March 2025 highs.

Tonight's price is +$4,000/contract compared to the closes on Friday and looks HUGE on the daily/weekly but is still just a small glitch on the year that will be another bear flag and shorting opportunity IF the weather does what the weather forecasts indicate..........turn much milder with a HUGE patter change that will start the first week in February with ABOVE AVERAGE temps.

The February NG has been unable to follow thru with more gains and is on the lows after 1 hour. Typical of NG on Sunday's open, we saw an initial OVER reaction to a huge change in the amount of cold(heat in the Summer). What happens is that everybody suddenly has the same idea at the same time and there aren't enough orders on the other side to fill it unless the market goes very deeply into the depth of the order deck, in this case, the amount of buy at the market orders were massive enough that the price had to open $4,000/contract higher to match up enough sellers with those buy at the market orders, RIGHT AT THE OPEN!

We're off the highs by $900/contract and if I had guts, selling earlier would have already paid some profits but the cold coming up is pretty dang extreme. It's impossible to know that all of it got dialed in with 10 minutes of the Sunday Night open. 

I'm not going to get carried away over analyzing based on 1 hours worth of market reaction. When we get more weather model updates, then there will be new information. The warm up is still 10+ days away. Too far away to declare we aren't going even higher first.

IF, IF i had had the guts, I would have had my friday 345 pm cst CALL!

Market was ripe for BOUNCE and 'weather' goof.

Cycle was extended for a low!!

Thanks, tjc!        

         Frigid Blast           

                            By metmike - Jan. 18, 2026, 9:14 p.m.            

        tjc,

I moved your natural gas posts in the weather thread to the natural gas thread:

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                By tjc - Jan. 18, 2026, 8:19 p.m.                                           

OK, Larry and MetMike---why were you not long late friday afternoon??

                       +++++++++++++++++=                         

                By metmike - Jan. 18, 2026, 9:14 p.m.            

Thanks, tjc!

1. I have chess practice T-W-Th-F the last 2 hours of NG trading with 5 different schools I coach at until early April so I can't monitor the market.

2. I have not held a position over the weekend in NG for over a decade.......even on non chess days. 

3. I've just been day trading but the cool thing is that I can trade on margins that are just a fraction of the overnight margins. They are just $1,000 for each contract of ng. If I want, I can trade double digit contracts with an account that isn't big enough to do that...........but MUST be out before the close.

4. I actually thought about a few contracts long but for the same reason that the market was not this high on Friday, there wasn't enough evidence to have confidence that the polar vortex was going to do this. If there had been, NG would have been sharply higher on Friday. 

5. I'm way past playing the should have, could have and only if I would have done this or that game.  For every, "if only I had done this" there's just as many "good thing I didn't to that's". This is the exact WRONG mentality to have for a professional trader.  We accept the consequences of decisions, learn a lesson if there is one, then move forward with a clear mind.  Failing to do this is the downfall of traders that think they have to get back a loss. Or that use emotions too much(However, as you know I do suffer from not pulling the trigger on some trades because I have too much fear-I don't count this one as being that).

  Holding a position over a weekend is taking an unnecessary risk that I don't want in my life anymore. I can get in and out with massive positions from Sunday Evening thru Friday Afternoon and I'm cool trading that way. In the past I was mainly a POSITION trader and that was awesome, especially before my 6 figure account was stolen on October 31, 2011 at MFG by Jon Corsine, then the new one I opened at PFG Best with borrowed money and the returned MFG money was stolen again in July 2012 by Wasendorf. 

MFG Bankruptcy

https://www.congress.gov/crs-product/R42091

PFG Bankruptcy

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Peregrine_Financial_Group

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Regardless of the response, that was an outstanding question.

If I believed the coldest model on Friday, the Canadian model than this result was a distinct possibility. This was the last run of the Canadian Ensemble at mid day Friday on day 8,  over 4 hours before the close:

https://weather.gc.ca/ensemble/charts_e.html?Hour=192&Day=2&RunTime=12&Type=gz

You can see numerous members of the ensemble were pretty bullish with the unusually far south Polar Vortex. However, the warm up after that was looking pretty big and ng has only gone up on days when the models get MUCH colder for the past 5+ weeks. 

                                ++++++++++++++++++++=

                By tjc - Jan. 18, 2026, 10:36 p.m.            

  Sorry MetMike, my Q did, in retrospect, come off as most critical.

  I guess I am trying to point "mere" weather is not the only trading criteria.

  1.  Grossly oversold  2.  Daily cycle timeframe for low  3. Weather "baked in"?  4.Low RFSI and Percent R buy  

Eventually, models predicting cold had to win out??

  The next best question is:  Will cold prevail long enough to allow more than a Sunday night blimp? 

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                           By metmike - Jan. 19, 2026, 1:40 a.m.            

            No problemo tjc!

You are exactly right that there are other factors besides weather but I disagree with you about them being bullish.

It's the exact opposite in my opinion. 

As mentioned numerous times last week the market UNDER performed on cold weather because of those bearish items. (Seasonals/supplies jumping much higher vs last year/strong trend down after the blow off top early last month).

If not for the Polar Vortex coming much farther south this would not have happened tonight.

As as you just witnessed (again) for the umpteenth time this evening, the market continues to struggle to hold gains when not being hit hard by much colder weather. 

We were over $1,500 off the highs a short while ago before the 0z GEFS AND Canadian model came out colder again.

If that's not weather, I don't know what is. At times when the models don't look as cold, almost every single time the past 6 weeks, the price went down, sometimes hard.........and it just happened again this evening before, again those 2 models came out colder.

So instead of the market being independent of weather as you suggest, its actually reacting very strongly to the weather with a bearish bias superimposed. Any time the weather is neutral, the market goes down. When the weather is bearish it goes down faster. When the weather is slightly bullish, it struggles to maintain gains. When its very bullish, the market goes up. The polar vortex doesn't go this far south too often so the next 10 days are almost as bullish as it gets for the Midwest where the high population centers will be burning massive amounts of natural gas.

After the very cold 0z models stopped the dropping (-$1,700 from the highs), the 6z GEFS lowered the boom again in purple with the coldest run yet, +7 HDDs from the already frigid 0z GEFS and a whopping +14 HDDs above the last 12z Sunday run that the model had when we opened up yesterday evening!

The trajectory in week 2 is still undeniable but the amount of cold is even MORE extreme and the market is paying close attention!

https://tradingeconomics.com/commodity/natural-gas

1. 1st short red line=Fridays close.

2nd short red line=Sundays open(HUGE GAP BELOW)

3rd short red line=06z GEFS model coming out even COLDER

Long red line=last weeks highs. We broke out above those with the last colder run.

True enough---Ngas making new highs as I type!

Also, Feb leading March, which is totally logical.

My perception IS you(Larry) will be focused on timing the next price level to SELL.

Bull spread even at apex?  Bull spread working on way up (cold)!  Feb expires 28 Jan

Thanks, tjc!

Your timing for the low last week was perfect but needed the Polar Vortex to cooperate.

BTW, Larry stopped trading several years ago because the extreme, sometimes unpredictable gyrations from big traders using algorithms were making it too crazy(this is making it almost too crazy for me too) and it has greatly curbed my actions.

You are correct about wanting to sell but if I had not been up to 2:30 am, maybe I would have bought shortly after 5am when the coldest yet 6z GEFS came out? Probably not but the dang cold 0z run before that had me extremely tempted but I just couldn't do it.  

Jut sharing my overnight thoughts.

Here's another one. If I had been long over the weekend and had the massive pay day on the open, there is NO WAY, that I would have stayed long for the $1.700/contract downside correction after the early evening high(before the models turned EVEN COLDER overnight).

1. Yeah, tjc, as MM said I haven’t traded in several years. I don’t know if/when I’ll resume, but it’s probably a bit more than likely to some extent.

2. It’s currently up 19%!! When was the last time it was up anywhere near that much intraday? Are we talking years? That’s my guess.

  Gentlemen

  Thank you both for very prompt replies.

  Mike, I can tell you as recently as last week---WHEN one gets an INSTANT winner, you MUST take it, OR AT A MINIMUM, place stop!  

  Ngas 'intrigues' me, but it appears only available to weather geeks with the very best weather technology!

Crazy for sure today!

Up almost +$6,000/contract!!!

Makes the -$1,700 correction last evening look like a gift/buying opportunity, which put us up less than $3,000/contract.

Too many traders leaning to one side(short) the last month+ just makes the reaction to the opposite side that much greater from short covering. 

That was one thing that tjc was looking at in picking the bottom, which in hindsight looks brilliant!

From a week ago(BEFORE the market(and me realized the Polar Vortex was headed this far south)

                By metmike - Jan. 11, 2026, 7:47 p.m.            

NG traders should never be short in April or May without a good reason.

NG traders should not be long the Feb/Mar futures without a good reason. Extreme cold early last year was the BEST reason to be long then. 

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Here's the exact example of what it took last year. In 2025, there was a huge spike up between January 31 and the top on March 10 on the far left of this 1 year price graph.

Note the temperatures in Mid February last year!

https://www.cpc.ncep.noaa.gov/products/tanal/temp_analyses.php

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january 19, 2026: Similar impact this week!!! The change from high to low a year ago started at $3 and went to $4.5, so $15,000/contract but it took several weeks. No way am I saying this will be the same thing..........UNLESS the models keep extending the length of the intense cold. Then it WILL be the same thing. 

Not as cold 12z guidance........natural gas gives up gains. -4+ HDDs on the 12z GEFS. EE will be/was even less cold.

2:30pm. The 12z European Ensemble model below (purple/left) was -9 HDDs compared to the previous 0 run from 12 hours earlier. The market sold off over $1,000/contract when this was coming out.

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https://tradingeconomics.com/commodity/natural-gas

Lines everywhere. Long line below was the high Friday, above that the high last week.

Short red lines are, from left to right: close Friday, then open Sunday, then COLDER 6z GEFS run, then LESS cold 12z models shown above(last red line).

The market closed early, at 1:30pm today. 

The longer range European model thats updated daily and goes out to early March cooled off the month February a great deal this afternoon. I'm not so interested in shorting unless the 2 week models have a huge milder change in any of the upcoming runs. 

This was the last forecast for the next 46 days.

This was the same forecast last Friday, 3 days ago.