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Natural Gas Futures Trading Based on Informed Traders Forecasts

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Academic paper

What Drives Informed Trading Before Public Releases? Evidence from Natural Gas Inventory Announcements

AuthorsChen Gu; Alexander Kurov

Institute
  • Shanghai Business School
  • ?Shanghai Business School - Research Center of Finance
  • West Virginia University
  • ?West Virginia University - College of Business & Economics

Strategy in a nutshell

The strategy uses both informed and consensus forecasts to construct a predictor for natural gas futures. When the predictor is negative, the investor takes a long position in futures; when positive, the investor shorts futures. Positions are opened 90 minutes before the announcement and closed 5 minutes prior to it.

Economic rationale

The results indicate that the profitability stems from the accuracy of informed traders’ forecasts, rather than from information leakage. This suggests that informed traders’ superior forecasting ability—rather than unfair access to data—drives the observed market behavior.

Backtest performance

Annualised return8.4%
Volatility10%
Sharpe ratio0.84