How to Read Henry Hub Natural Gas Futures Quotes

NG identifies standard NYMEX Henry Hub Natural Gas futures, but the root does not identify one dated agreement by itself. The delivery month and year distinguish the particular contract whose price, trading calendar, and delivery process are being observed. Keep all three parts visible whenever a quote is copied, compared, or described.

What Henry Hub Natural Gas futures are explains the standard NG contract before its screen fields are interpreted. Futures contract month codes explains the common month-and-year convention without making a short provider label a complete contract definition.

An NG chart label may name one delivery month, abbreviate the front month, or describe a continuous series assembled from several months. A provider can join, roll, or adjust that series to extend its history. That makes the series useful for studying a price path, but it does not establish the dated contract or price field available for a particular order.

Before using an NG chart value, record whether the venue shows a named delivery month or a series, how a series changes months, the displayed field, the source, and the observation time. Futures continuous chart versus tradable contract separates a chart construction from the specific futures agreement behind an order.

NG is quoted in U.S. dollars per MMBtu, and one standard contract represents 10,000 MMBtu. For ordinary outright trading, CME specifies a minimum fluctuation of $0.001 per MMBtu. That makes one ordinary outright tick $10 for one standard NG contract.

For a verified standard NG outright, multiplying $0.001 per MMBtu by 10,000 MMBtu makes the minimum displayed move worth $10.

The $0.00025-per-MMBtu, or $2.50, increment is only for simultaneous Globex inter-commodity spreads. Do not use that special spread increment to describe an ordinary outright NG quote. Futures tick value and contract multipliers keeps the quote increment, multiplier, and contract quantity separate.

A bid records displayed buying interest, an ask records displayed selling interest, a last trade records a completed transaction, and an exchange daily settlement is a separately labelled exchange field. Those fields can show different values without conflict. A displayed last trade can be old, and a settlement is not automatically a current price at which an order can execute.

Futures settlement price versus last trade explains why the two labels cannot be substituted in a calculation or report. Keep the source's own field name instead of calling every NG number “the gas price.”

The same named NG contract can be observed in different sessions or data states. A price can be current, delayed, paused, closed, or supplied under a provider's particular field definition. A timestamp locates the observation in time; it does not establish which field was used or whether a later order can be filled at that number.

Are futures quotes delayed or real-time? explains why the source and data-status label matter alongside a number. How to read futures contract specifications provides a way to verify the named product's unit, quotation, minimum fluctuation, and final-process terms.

This guide explains how to identify a standard Henry Hub Natural Gas futures quote. It does not provide live market data, recommend an order, guarantee liquidity, or equate a futures observation with a cash-market, settlement, or delivery value. Current CME rules and current market data govern the exact quote.