As traders prepared to digest updated government inventory data that could reveal an unusually early net injection following blowtorch winter weather, natural gas futures hovered just shy of even early Thursday.

The April Nymex contract was trading at $1.648/MMBtu at around 8:35 a.m. ET, off 1.0 cent. May was down 1.3 cents to $1.771.

The April contract turned in a sixth straight negative session Wednesday as exceptionally weak physical prices pointed to soft fundamentals. Day-ahead Henry Hub prices traded as low as $1.190, undercutting the $1.200 daily low recorded in 2020, according to NGI’s Daily GPI.

The natural gas markets “continue to look for a price floor,” analysts at Mobius Risk Group observed following Wednesday’s sell-off.

“Three announcements of...