Staged

After penetrating lower on Monday, August natural gas staged a rebound in Tuesday’s session, trading as high as $7.470 before settling at $7.425, up 14.1 cents on the day.

Traders were hard-pressed to come up with any substantive explanation for why cash prices staged modest rallies at most points Wednesday. There was no prior-day screen strength at which to point, and other than a warming trend in the South (destined to be brief) and colder temperatures in Western Canada and the northwestern quadrant of the U.S., the weather outlook failed to provide any rationale for higher quotes.

Bulls staged a surprising 9.4% rally in March futures to a high on Friday of $2.21 from Wednesday’s low of $2.02. March ended Friday up 4.1 cents to $2.191, slightly off its daily high and 2.6 cents from its $2.165 low, leaving many observers on the edges of their seats wondering if the large number of speculative shorts would reconsider their exposure and propel the market into the $2.20s and possibly $2.30s.

What a difference a day can make. Just 27 hours after testingkey support at $2.81, natural gas futures staged a completeturnaround, rallying to its highest daily continuation chartsettlement price this year. Nearly non-existent fundamental factorsgave traders little choice but to rely again on technical tradingtools for price direction. After the May contract posted animpressive gap higher open, that direction was in little doubt. Theprompt contract finished up 6.8 cents at $2.956, just a fraction ofa cent off its $2.96 high and within a nickel of its $3.005all-time high.

Cash prices staged a broad-based retreat Monday, giving up 3-5cents at most Eastern points with Western declines tending to belarger at a nickel or more. The market lost some of last week’sfundamental support as a warming trend started to develop in theWest, sources said. In addition, although the Henry Hub futurescontract for May later reversed field and achieved an overall gainfor the day, its weakness in the morning rubbed off on cashtrading.