Coming off a decisive advance on Friday, natural gas futures were hovering close to even in early trading Monday as analysts highlighted a mix of potential bullish and bearish factors influencing prices to start the week. The September Nymex contract was off 1.1 cents to $2.345/MMBtu at around 8:40 a.m. ET.

AM markets

The latest forecast from Bespoke Weather Services showed no major changes over the weekend, although the firm noted a divergence between the major models. The European moved “significantly hotter” than its American counterpart.

Bespoke said it favors the cooler American model “given verifications over the last several weeks, which have shown that models, even when the pattern was running hotter, have had a tendency to show too much medium range heat…Western heat remains...