Dow Jones - Natural Gas Retreats As Warm November Forecasts Hold

DJ Natural Gas Retreats as Warm November Forecasts Hold

  By Timothy Puko


  Natural gas ended its three-session winning streak as warm November forecasts pushed the market's largest losses in
two weeks.

  Prices for the front-month December contract settled down 7.1 cents, or 3%, at $2.30 a million British thermal units
on the New York Mercantile Exchange. It was the biggest decline in one session since a 9.8% dive took gas to a
three-year low on Oct. 26.

  The January and February contracts fell slightly further than the front month. About half of U.S. homes rely on gas
for heat, and weather has been unseasonably warm so far, leading to fear that supplies will back up in to the winter,
analysts have said.

  "The weather outlook does not look as bleak as it did to start the month, but we need to see some extraordinary
heating demand to break the downward trend," said Aaron Calder, senior market analyst at energy-consulting firm Gelber
& Associates in Houston, in a note.

  Recent sessions have brought a small rebound as warm forecasts started to give way to colder ones, the first sign
that a surge of heating demand could be on the way. But Monday's updates aren't showing that cold spreading, and still
have the largest Eastern and Midwestern markets covered in unseasonably warm weather until nearly Thanksgiving.

  "It fell well short of (what) the bulls were hoping for," said Scott Shelton, broker at ICAP PLC, in a note.


  Write to Timothy Puko at tim.puko@wsj.com


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  (END) Dow Jones Newswires

  November 09, 2015 15:34 ET (20:34 GMT)

  Copyright (c) 2015 Dow Jones & Company, Inc.

110915 20:34 -- GMT
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