While natural gas over much of past 4 years as been about as fun as watching paint dry – it picked up activity starting mid-April in what we’ve been calling the Jeff Gundlach Low here in the office – it was up 15% today out of nowhere.

Natural gas has been called the widowmaker by many in the industry for the sharp price moves it has been known to have, making widows out of many trader’s wives (I guess the metaphor goes…) as they take killer losses due to the out-of-nowhere volatility. In fact, we got a class action suit participation form in the mail this week for Amaranth Advisors – all we had to do was fill out every position we traded in natural gas over 2 years and provide supporting statements, etc. and we could have gotten $8.42 – we passed.

Over the last few years, natural gas has been more of a shadow of its former volatile self… but today contained the echoes of the widowmaker we once knew. We wanted to see just where it stacks up in terms of big moves for the notoriously volatile market.

While today’s 15% move still falls well short of the incredible volatility of the past (38% in a day!), it’s still about double what we’ve seen in the rest of 2012, and the highest single-day move since 2010. Is this move a sign of things to come in natural gas, or only a brief glimpse of the widowmaker that once was?