Despite the fact that much of the midwestern and eastern parts of the country are plunging into the season’s second cold freeze, natural gas futures traders appeared unmoved Friday as the March contract bounced back and forth before closing the regular session at $5.515, up 9.9 cents from Thursday’s finish and 38.4 cents from the previous week’s close.

The Mid-Atlantic region was hit hardest by the storm, which was dubbed “Snowmageddon” by the Washington Post. The storm was expected to deposit 20-30 inches of snow in parts of the area. Even with the storm and eastern chill, futures bulls were unable to really take advantage.

“The market is seeing this cold, but it is going to have to show some staying power to get much reaction from the natural gas market,” said a Washington, DC-based broker. “As for Friday’s small bounce, I think natural gas was responding to some of the other markets, which were melting down Friday in the face of the woes out of the European Union based on concerns that Greece and Portugal are not going to be able to service their debt.”

Ed Kennedy, a broker with Hencorp Futures LC in Miami, said the futures market is currently spinning its wheels, nothing more, nothing less. “The natural gas market really is not doing much of anything noteworthy because we are basically range-trading between $5.200 and $5.900,” he told NGI. “The market is not responding to the current stretch of cold because we’ve got the gas in storage to handle it. We’ll have to see if it sticks around.”

Sticking around is exactly what some of the independent forecasters are predicting. “The forecast for the last two weeks of February is much below normal,” Kennedy said. “Some of the forecasters are comparing it to 1978 conditions, where the highs in New York were single digits. The problem is this is still a little ways off. When it gets to be a short-range forecast, if it is still intact, the market might react to it. They’re also saying March will be below normal, but you have to remember we’re talking about the weather. How much money do you really want to bet on forecasts as unreliable as weather? It is also a double-edged sword, because if the forecasts moderate warmer, we could easily head in the other direction.”

More near term, AccuWeather.com meteorologist Eric Reese said the Mid-Atlantic will likely get another round of snow on Tuesday while it is still digging out from the current storm, but this time the Northeast will also be in the cross hairs. “Another dose of harsh winter reality will hit the Northeast toward the middle of next week as the next winter storm will begin to take shape,” Reese said. “This storm is still well over the Pacific Ocean, but all signs point to it being another disruptive snowfall.”

Some analysts see the impact of cold weather as helpful, but the market is now on the downside of winter, and the impact of below-normal temperatures will diminish. “While colder readings will certainly help this market, we believe that we will need to see it last through most of the rest of this month to turn prices back up and keep them headed higher,” said Peter Beutel of Cameron Hanover. Under Beutel’s scenario, last week’s report of a lower-than-expected storage draw of 115 Bcf could be a problem. “The heart of winter is behind us now, and we will soon have less of an opportunity to eat into the surpluses.”

Natural gas, energy and equity traders alike were reasonably pleased with the 8:30 a.m. EST Friday release of January employment figures by the Labor Department. Traders were already on high alert from Thursday’s weekly initial jobless claims, which came in at 480,000, well above the 455,000 analysts were expecting. Expectations for the January figure were for zero losses in non-farm payrolls, an improvement over December’s 85,000 decline. The actual figure was a loss of 20,000. March Standard and Poor’s stock index futures rose about 7 points immediately after the release of the figures.

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