Plumbing

Tuesday’s uptick in near-month natural gas futures was exposed as mere short-covering on Wednesday as the May contract returned to the recent trend of plumbing the downside. The front-month contract reached a low of $3.860 before closing out the regular session at $3.869, down 10.4 cents from Tuesday’s finish.

After plumbing lower price levels in overnight electronic trade and again on Wednesday morning, June natural gas futures made another run at $12 Wednesday afternoon as the contract recorded a high on the day of $11.975 before backing off to expire at $11.916, up 11.5 cents from Tuesday’s finish. July futures, which now assume front-month contract status, put in a high of $12.082 before settling at $11.995, up 7.6 cents from Tuesday’s close.

After plumbing new two-month lows late last week, the natural gas futures market rebounded impressively Monday on the undeniably bullish combination of surging crude oil prices, forecasts calling for continued below-normal temperatures and expectations ahead of this Thursday’s storage report.

After plumbing to a new 29-month prompt month low last week, natural gas futures finished on a neutral note Friday with a modest decline in the front month, contrasted by slight up-ticks in the out months. The October contract closed at $2.103, down 3.4 cents for the session, but off its new life-of-contract low notched Thursday at $2.03. Meanwhile, the 12-month strip posted its second-straight positive close, gaining 0.8 cents to $2.836.

After plumbing to the lowest levels in over a month Monday, thefutures market rallied yesterday as scale down commercial buyingreceived unexpected support from local traders eager to reverseshort positions. The June contract finished at $2.200, up 2.4 centsfor the day.