Nanex Research

Nanex ~ 21-Feb-2013 ~ Chicken or the Egg?

Here we go again. Another Thursday, another episode of "Banging the beehive". Or is it - getting the 10:30 EIA News early? Below, we compare 7 charts of the Natural Gas ETF (symbol UNG) interleaved with 7 charts of March 2013 Natural Gas Futures. What is interesting is that sometimes UNG activity occurs ahead of futures activity, and sometimes it comes after. Compare each set of charts.

The first image shows trading activity exploded in UNG at 10:29:59.984 which is16 milliseconds before the official release of 10:30:00. But the next image, shows activity in the March 2013 Natural Gas Futures contract didn't start until 10:29:59.999. Since we are using official exchange time-stamps, maybe the clocks are not synchronized between the two instruments. After looking closely at other sudden bursts of activity just seconds earlier, we think the exchange time-stamps were accurate and synchronized. Which means another mystery to solve.

Nanex Research

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