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NEW YORK (Dow Jones)--Natural-gas futures fell for a second day Tuesday as an outlook for slightly warmer weather for the next two weeks hit demand expectations for the heating fuel and sent traders cashing out of a market that had recently touched five-month highs.
Natural gas for February delivery settled 10.7 cents, or 2.3%, lower, at $4.473 a million British thermal units on the New York Mercantile Exchange. Futures early Monday hit their highest level since August, but have slid by more than 8% since as market participants cashed out to profit from the market's recent advance amid slightly warmer forecasts and continued pressure from ample supplies.
Weather for the rest of this week and Feb. 4-8 is seen slightly warmer than previously expected, meteorologists with private forecaster MDA EarthSat said. The next two weeks should be characterized by warmer-than-average temperatures across parts of the western half of the country, with cold in the east.
"The expectation is that the cold will hang on in the East and Midwest," said Paul Markert, a senior meteorologist with MDA. "More of what we've already seen this winter," he added.
Meanwhile, a supply overhang still weighs on market sentiment, and the view that the coldest weather of the winter may have passed pressured the market Tuesday, analysts said. Inventories as of Jan. 14 stood at 2.716 trillion cubic feet, 1.9% above the five-year average, according to the Energy Information Administration.
But analysts said natural-gas prices are unlikely to fall below $4/MMBtu in the near term, with meteorologists expecting colder-than-normal temperatures to stretch into February and March.
Cold weather in major heating markets in the central U.S. should keep support under gas prices next month, private forecaster WSI Corp. and market-research firm Energy Security Analysis Inc. said in their most recent seasonal weather outlook. With the forecasts for continued cold, ESAI cut its estimates for the amount of gas in U.S. storage at the end of winter's withdrawal season to 1.65 trillion cubic feet.
Many earlier estimates had called for a relatively mild winter, with some analysts expecting that natural-gas inventories at the end of winter would stand at a record above 1.7 tcf. But bitter cold in December and January has forced power generators to rely more heavily on inventories, bringing bloated stockpiles closer to average levels
nn sei al lavoro oggi? abbiamo passato abbastanza con decisione i 4.5$ di nuovo dopo che irei abbiamo temuto che cedesse i 4.4$ per cui come ho detto ieri sono fiducioso in un nuovo allungo ,il $ non ci da una mano però il freddo per i prossimi 10 giorni in usa si