Natural gas futures avoided falling further into the red on Wednesday despite expectations for a modest storage withdrawal and forecasts that called for continued mild weather and light heating demand.

Evening Market

The April Nymex contract settled at $2.692/MMBtu, up 3.0 cents day/day. The prompt month had declined the five previous trading sessions. May advanced 3.2 cents on Wednesday to $2.728.

NGI’s Spot Gas National Avg. eked out a 1.5-cent gain to $2.485, snapping a four-day losing streak amid comfortable spring temperatures.

Thomas Saal, senior vice president of energy at StoneX Financial Inc., told NGI that the advances in futures likely reflected a technical bounce – as opposed to a response to a new catalyst – with speculators shifting from sellers to buyers in anticipation...