For the fourth straight trading session, natural gas futuresraced off to a fast start Wednesday as locals and speculators triedagain to push the market through key resistance and above therecent trading range. But unlike the failure and subsequent sellingthat plagued the market on the prior three occasions, yesterday’smarket was able to hold on and add to gains late in the day. TheAugust contract finished at $2.253, up 5.5 cents.

Crude oil futures also played a supporting role in the reboundyesterday. After cascading lower both before and after the releaseof American Petroleum Institute (API) data Tuesday, crude oilfutures made modest gains into the close Wednesday. The realcatalyst may have been natural gas prices in the physical market,which rumbling higher yesterday morning. NGI’s Henry Hub average is$2.25.

In fact, there was so much new information for traders to digestyesterday, they almost forgot about the weekly release of freshstorage data by the American Gas Association. But even alarger-than-expected injection-78 Bcf-could not dampen the market’sbullish spirit last night in the Access trading session.

After briefly probing lower and stalling, the market waspropelled higher as bulls aggressively bid the August contract 1.5cents higher. In fact, the buying was so frenzied that one Houstontrader reported 1,700 contracts trading in the first 17 minutes ofthe after-hours trading session. If natural gas experienced thatrate of activity over its entire five hour and 10 minute regularsession, the daily volume would surpass 300,000 contracts, whichwould easily shatter the current volume record of 168,057.

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