A writer of detective fiction might call it The Mystery of the Unsupported Bullishness. Even with the typical lower demand of a weekend added to other negative fundamental influences arguing for lower gas prices, most of the cash market continued to achieve small advances Friday.

Quotes in the East and at a few western points ranged from flat to up about a dime, but again the majority of upticks were small at around a nickel or less. Only the West, which was due to start losing some of the late-summer heat that has buoyed numbers in the region recently, recorded losses that ranged up to almost 15 cents in the Rockies.

Although the north central states were likely to be 10 to 20 degrees above average over the weekend, cold fronts will be moving southward into both the Midwest and Northeast early this week, according to The Weather Channel. The Pacific Northwest was due to remain warm to hot through Saturday, it said, but a cold front approaching from the Gulf of Alaska would then start cooling that region and reach much of the northern Rockies by Tuesday.

One trader had a short, if not so sweet, answer for prices defying the laws of market gravity: “It’s a bunch of stupid buyers.” Actually, he confessed, it was a mystery to him and his colleagues about why prices remained firm following sizeable start-of-week declines. “Nobody really seems to be buying that much, but obviously they are” because three days in a row of even slightly higher prices don’t happen without demand somewhere, he went on. “It must be a psychological thing; we’re at a comfortable level under $5, and so traders don’t seem to mind much if prices don’t go lower. Some people want to short this market, but they’re scared to.”

The trader said he was pulling gas out of storage late last week “to sell now and reinject later,” possibly as late as next month when shoulder month weather presumably will have had time to weigh more heavily on prices. He speculated that “maybe some others can’t take advantage of that storage play with the current wide spreads to next-winter numbers.”

A Mid-Atlantic marketer allowed that maybe cash was getting a carry-over lift Friday from the screen’s dime-plus rise the day before, although he thought that the market should have paid more attention to weak fundamentals instead. “We had expected prices would go down for the weekend.” Some people just want prices to go up for whatever reason, he said, and they’re managing to do so lately even without any fundamental help. As an afterthought, the marketer said he didn’t know whether to be worried about Hurricane Fabian approaching his region; “we’re kind of hoping it will veer off towards England.”

A Gulf Coast producer commented that trading was “pretty uneventful until some folks were short at the [Henry] Hub near the end of the day” and ignited a modest run-up.

A marketer noted that temperatures had sunk into the 30s overnight in the Upper Midwest, but added, “There’s no real heating load, though.” The thermometer got back up to about 73 Friday, and in those kind of conditions houses can usually retain enough daytime warmth that furnaces aren’t needed at night, she said. Figuratively knocking on wood, the marketer said, “I sure hope it’s not a sign of early winter.”

The Atlantic storm front remained highly active but still without any significant gas market impact other than Tropical Storm Henri (upgraded overnight from a tropical depression) promising to keep much of Florida and parts of other South Atlantic states very wet and thus cool through early this week. Henri was “moving erratically east-northeastward” from a position about 75 miles southwest of Cedar Key, FL at 5 p.m. EDT Friday, the National Hurricane Center said. A tropical storm warning was in effect for the state’s Gulf Coast from Englewood north to the Aucilla River. The storm’s center was expected to make landfall by early Saturday morning.

Fabian was punishing Bermuda Friday afternoon with winds near 120 mph. It was moving northward at nearly 20 mph, but an expected turn to the north-northeast would have it gradually moving away from both Bermuda and the U.S. East Coast. Some weakening was forecast over the next 24 hours, NHC said.

Analyst Kyle Cooper of Citigroup said his initial estimation for this week’s storage report calls for a build near 100 Bcf, which would compare with volumes of 74 Bcf last year and a five-year average of 68 Bcf. “We do believe injections in September will be quite large and keep the pressure on prices,” Cooper continued. “…Despite our bearish fundamental outlook, we are also quite realistic as to market psychology. The one-year memory/mentality of most participants leaves very few sellers in the market with [futures] prices at $11.899 as recently as February. Thus, we consider it unlikely that until this winter is at least partially completee, a move to $4 or much below is considered a low probability even. We mention low probability because we never say never with natural gas and our outlook is bearish.”

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