For the third time in as many days the futures market gavetraders a head fake on the open, only to retrace during theremainder of the session. However, while the price action Mondayand Tuesday was down, then up, the opposite was true yesterday.Feeding off gains achieved during Tuesday’s Access trading session,the December contract notched its $2.905 high moments after theopen and proceeded to chop lower throughout the day. But thoselosses proved inadequate to overcome earlier gains and that enabledthe prompt contract to break its string of declines at 4 days,finishing instead up 3.6 cents at $2.873.

Susannah Hardesty of Indiana-based Energy Research and Tradingremains optimistic that higher prices are on the horizon, andbelieves it will be the weather in the second half of November thatwill really get the market moving. She cites weather models,consistent with the La Nina pattern, that call for a zonal weatherpattern for the first half of the month to be replaced by a moreactive series of cold troughs coming down from Canada for thesecond half. And Because of that Hardesty contends it will be theone-two combination of back-to-back blasts of cold air that willpropel the market higher. “This market will continue to be drivenby expectations,” she reasoned.

How high does it go from there? That depends on speculative fundparticipation, Hardesty continues. “With them along for the ridethis market is capable of making the a third fall high between Dec.13 and 31 on a move to $4.50-$5.80.” Without heavy fundparticipation, she believes prices will move only to the $3.50-4.00level.

Of more immediate concern, however, is the latest storagereport, which was released after the close yesterday afternoon.According to the American Gas Association, 4 Bcf was injected intounderground storage facilities last week, versus a 48 Bcf buildlast year. Traders’ wasted little time reacting to that report,bidding the December contract up 3.7 cents to $2.91 in yesterday’sAccess trading session.

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