Flat price can move while prompt structure weakens. Curve history helps distinguish immediate scarcity, broad tightening, and isolated front-end pressure.
Measure prompt tightness and broader curve structure without roll artifacts.
Price & Curve History stores the actual contemporaneous contracts behind M1, M2, and M6 observations and calculates both raw and normalized spreads.
Is the front of the curve tightening, loosening, or diverging from the broader strip?
Start simple. Keep the professional context.
Every screen preserves the instrument, period, unit, source, and limitation while explaining why the evidence matters.
Identify the observation before interpreting it.
Read the instrument, unit, timestamp, period, and source first. A weekly stock estimate and a five-minute futures quote answer different questions.
Compare level, change, and historical context.
The current value matters less without its direction of travel, seasonal baseline, related markets, and the catalyst that moved expectations.
Demand cross-source confirmation and preserve uncertainty.
Treat every dataset as evidence with a release lag, methodology, revision risk, and known blind spots. The workflow should be reproducible after the fact.
What each component means—and how a desk reads it.
Definitions stay plain enough to learn from, while the desk read preserves the mechanism, cadence, and source a professional user expects.
M1, M2, and M6
The first, second, and sixth eligible listed contracts for WTI, Brent, or Henry Hub on each observation date.
Enerlytics stores the actual contract symbols and months so an old spread can be reconstructed without guessing the roll.
- Cadence
- Daily listed-contract history
- Source
- Databento futures definitions and OHLC/settlement data
M1-M2 spread
Front settlement minus second-month settlement, in the commodity's native price unit.
Positive is backwardation and negative is contango; the change in the spread reveals strengthening, weakening, narrowing, or deepening.
- Cadence
- Daily
- Source
- Contemporaneous M1 and M2 contracts
M1-M6 spread
Front settlement minus sixth-month settlement, measuring broader near-term structure.
If M1-M2 strengthens while M1-M6 does not, prompt tightness lacks broad curve confirmation.
- Cadence
- Daily
- Source
- Contemporaneous M1 and M6 contracts
Normalized spread
The raw spread divided by M1 and expressed as a percentage.
Normalization supports WTI-versus-gas comparison without pretending that $/bbl and $/MMBtu are directly comparable.
- Cadence
- Daily
- Source
- Derived Enerlytics analytics
Regime and distribution context
One-, five-, and twenty-day changes, percentile, rolling z-score, 52-week range, two-year range, and days in regime describe persistence and extremity.
Crossing zero is a regime transition; a high percentile describes history, not a guaranteed reversal.
- Cadence
- Daily
- Source
- Derived roll-aware spread history
Contract candles
OHLC bars show the actual selected delivery contract at the interval reliably available for that instrument.
A daily bar with identical O/H/L/C renders as a flat tick; it should not be described as an intraday candle or filled with invented range.
- Cadence
- Daily for calendar-tenor contracts; intraday where licensed
- Source
- Provider OHLC history
The evidence underneath the screen.
- WTI, Brent, and Henry Hub calendar tenors
- M1-M2 and M1-M6 raw spreads
- Normalized percentage spreads
- Historical percentiles, z-scores, highs, and lows
- Auditable contract symbols and roll dates
Method before conclusion.
- 01
Positive is backwardation and negative is contango
- 02
Direction of change distinguishes strengthening from weakening
- 03
M1-M2 measures prompt conditions; M1-M6 measures broader near-term structure
Evidence moves through a workflow.
- 01Contract prices
- 02Spread level
- 03Spread change
- 04Regime and percentile
- 05Physical confirmation
Backwardation is not automatically bullish and contango is not automatically bearish. Natural-gas interpretation must account for seasonal delivery months.
Distinguish prompt pressure from broad curve confirmation
The sign of a spread is only the first observation. Direction, persistence, distribution, and the physical mechanism complete the read.
- 1
Identify months
Verify the actual M1, M2, and M6 delivery contracts used on the date.
- 2
Read sign
Classify backwardation, contango, or a zero-line transition.
- 3
Read change
Measure whether the structure strengthened or weakened over 1D, 5D, and 20D.
- 4
Compare breadth
Contrast M1-M2 with M1-M6 and flag front-end tightening, broad tightening, or divergence.
- 5
Confirm physically
Open inventory, storage, freight, weather, or flows to explain why the curve changed.
Trust comes from showing the seams.
Roll-aware construction
Each observation uses contemporaneous eligible contracts and stores their identifiers. Expired or stale months are not carried forward to manufacture a continuous spread.
Commodity-specific interpretation
Natural-gas seasonality means a winter-to-summer spread cannot be interpreted exactly like a WTI prompt spread.
Coverage reviewed against the production data store on October 2, 2026. Live totals continue to grow.
- WTI, Brent, and Henry Hub roll-aware M1/M2/M6 series currently extend back to September 2023.
- Production contains more than 2,200 derived daily curve observations with auditable contract metadata.
Enerlytics links the underlying methodology so customers can distinguish a product interpretation from the source definition.
A real Enerlytics workflow—not a conceptual mockup.

See the evidence used in a real market conversation.
Enerlytics publishes weekly market recaps, component explainers, and thesis walkthroughs. For Price & Curve History, the recurring desk question is: Did M1-M2 and M1-M6 confirm each other this week, or did the change remain isolated at the front?
Put this evidence inside the full decision workflow.
Start with a free trial. Review the data, methodology, related evidence, and limitations before making your own market decision.
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