Regroup

Trading within an extra thin 6-cent range, June natural gas futures on Friday appeared to be taking the day off to regroup. After trading just above or below Thursday’s settle for the entire session, the prompt month ended up settling at $6.343, down 1.4 cents on the day and 19.3 cents lower for the week.

Looking at Monday’s wild trading day in natural gas futures and perhaps taking a moment to regroup and contemplate their next moves, traders on Tuesday tested both resistance and support before pushing the April futures contract sideways.

After suffering though a week’s worth of daily advances, bears finally got their chance Monday as extremely mild weather forecasts turned last week’s buyers of natural gas futures into sellers. When a quick uptick at the opening bell failed to surpass Friday’s $5.295 high, sell orders flooded into the trading pit. It took just an hour for the September contract to drop 25 cents Monday morning, nullifying about two-thirds of last week’s advance. It closed for the session at $5.083, down 19.7 cents on the day.

Despite calls for an expiration-day short-covering rally, natural gas futures traded listlessly sideways Tuesday, evidence that most traders had already squared their August books. With that the August contract limped off the board at $4.693, down 0.7 cents for the session, 60 cents less than July’s settlement and a whopping 72 cents below where it was when it became prompt contract a month ago. At 80,239, estimated volume was extremely low for an expiration day.

Natural gas futures were hit with another wave of selling earlyFriday as traders added to losses incurred during Thursday’s25-cent price slide. However after notching its lowest price inthree weeks at $2.87, the December contract worked its way higherto settle at $2.961, a 0.4-cent loss for the day.

Bulls have had very little if anything positive to talk aboutlately with respect to gas prices at the New York MercantileExchange. Mild June temps, a healthy storage level, and amplesupply have weighed on the market since the current downtrend beganon April 9th. So it comes as no surprise that upon the release ofthe less-than-expected 86 Bcf AGA storage injection, bulls sawtheir first opportunity in a while to push the market higher. Thefirst thrust was registered in Wednesday night’s ACCESS session.Then, after opening higher yesterday, the contract traded in a neat5-cent trading range settling at $1.970, up 4 cents for the day.