2/22/2013 Update:

Thursdays’ Crude Pit Session:

High: 93.63

Low: 92.63

Close:  92.78

Looking ahead to today:

Although we saw a huge move to the downside during Wednesday’s pit session and the DOE inventory numbers were released yesterday, Crude traded in an overall tighter than anticipated 1.00 range during yesterday’s pit session.   Yesterday’s DOE number came in with a much larger than expected draw (4m vs 2m)   however we saw a draw in Distillates.  This divergence in inventory numbers created a mixed sentiment amongst traders.  This, along with the fact we saw Crude trade lower in Wednesday’s overnight session off the larger than expected draw in API numbers showed that Crude Pit traders felt the large -4M draw on Crude had already been priced into the market.    We did however; see that Volatility was up by over 4 Vols and the OVX trading up to the 29 handle.   Given this high Volatility, a close and settle below the 92.50-92.00  level could quickly break our new trading range of 92.00 to 96.00 and quickly push us down to the 90.00 to 86.00 handle as options suggest.  We have very little key economic data scheduled for release today.  That said, we will need to keep a close eye on our technical levels today and any breaking Geopolitical news that may move this market.

Levels:

Support: 93.01, 92.62, 92.41, 91.98, 91.01

Resistance:  93.40, 94.01, 94.57, 95.01

Thursdays’ Natural Gas Pit Session:

High: 3.337

Low: 3.231

Close:  3.244

Looking ahead to today:

We saw Natural Gas prices trade lower on the session once again even though yesterday’s weekly Storage Report came in with a slightly larger than expected draw (-127BCF vs -119BCF).  We did see an initial spike to session highs at 3.337 immediately following the release, however pit traders quickly went on the offer to bring us all the way back down to session lows as the latest weather forecasts once again came in mixed with a colder than expected temperatures expected in the short term and warmer than expected temperatures predicted in the long term.  We are currently trading in a 3.200 to 3.330 range and traders are looking for some type of Catalyst to possibly break this range.   That said,  we will need to continue to keep a close eye on the latest weather reports and news wires about any changing supply and demand issues that may influence traders to break this range.   

Levels:

Support: 3.231, 3.202, 3.163, 3.057

Resistance: 3.269, 3.308, 3.308, 3.337

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