Hi folks — out of time for a new sleuthtacular effort for daily consumption by my favorite readers, but I have noticed one thing that has really caught my readers’ attention lately: Natural Gas.

I bring this up not only because natural gas is a hot investment idea once again among many folks — including the likes of Jim Cramer and T. Boone Pickens, but because two of the more interesting companies in this sector that I’ve covered have been moving up the charts.

So, sorry to not provide new food for thought (or for profit) today, but if you’re interested in Natural Gas and want to move beyond XTO, which is certainly one of the hotties these days, one thing that stands out among the two successful (at least in the short term) natural gas companies on the Gumshoe Spreadsheet is financial sophistication.

So maybe financial acumen and creativity doesn’t have to be a bad thing — that’s clearly a large part of what Aubrey McClendon brings to Chesapeake, a Motley Fool Inside Value pick from a while back.

And the other company that stands out in this list is a little one from Chris Mayer, one that I really regret not buying: The Next Great Energy Miracle. This one brought an asset-light model with low capex, it appears, and that leverage has served them very well for an 88% gain in less than six months.

Of course, not all natural gas ideas are winners, even with the price moving up so nicely this winter. Talisman has been stuck in the mud for the year since I wrote about it. Nabors, the big gas driller, has barely stayed even while other service companies have thrived. And our friends at Bayou Bend Petroleum, despite their site’s auspicious history in the family of the “Railroad baron”, has experienced what can only be called a pantsing.

That is just a small smattering of the natural gas-related stocks on the board, of course, I just found it interesting that two of them that I keep returning to with interest have run so high of late. I know from the email traffic I get and from comments from many of you that natural gas has been a popular investment, and that a few companies make the tops of your lists, too — if you’d like to share your ideas in the sector here, please be my guest.

Sorry for today’s format — I tend to think of writeups like this as being the Gumshoe’s equivalent of the “clips show,” when the stars of your favorite sitcom sit around on directors chairs and slap each others’ knees about their antics from previous episodes. I hope not to lean on this crutch too often … and I hope you’re all enjoying what promises to be yet another ridiculous week of market volatility.

And hey, since I haven’t tied you up with 3,000 words of Gumshoe tomfoolery: If you want a tonic to soothe your short term nerves, go back and read a few of Warren Buffett’s old shareholder letters (if you haven’t already heard too much about him this week) … maybe the long term will be our friend again one day, and we can hope that we’ve really chosen little ticker symbols that represent real, underlying business value instead of just the emotional swings of bipolar crowds.

The author will always disclose any direct long or short equity, debt or option position in any stocks written about as of the day of publication, and will not trade in any stocks mentioned for three days after publication. Full disclaimer is at the bottom of the page. More Gumshoe goodness: natural gas