Author: Willis Bennett

Weekly Continuous

Technical analysis holds that once price has broken through the upper boundary of a well – defined range of significant length and done so with internals confirmation of the break, the technical expectation is that the prompt will return to test the breakout level. If the breakout is valid volume during the retracement will diminish and open interest will fall–not necessarily back to the prior low (the total number of contracts outstanding on 09/27 with price at $2.764 was the lowest since 01/30). Support bracketing the old range boundary will limit further decline and prompt gas will trade a higher low and begin to recover for a retest of immediately preceding high. Assuming that price action confirms the breakout level the last low and the higher low will provide anchor points for a new short – intermediate term uptrend. In the current case the upper boundary of the trading range was defined by the March high and then the August and September highs, all between$2.997 and $3.027.

Discussed a comparison to a similar range constructed between Q4 ’20 and Q2 ’21 . Once that construction was resolved to the upside prompt gas did not exactly conform to the expectation of testing the breakout. Rather, trade went very quiet for over two weeks then prompt gas tested support and provide an anchor point for a rising trend line that held over the next four months.

This past week, November started out lower, but rather than retreating enough to at least close the remainder of the “expiration gap” left last Thursday prices reversed from a low of $2.820 and posted a strong gain that was reminiscent of the rally to the August high (from $2.457 then prompt September rallied to $3.018 in five trading days) only to fail. This time the resistance that began to be defined by the March high ($3.027) and was further defined by highs during August and September ($3.018 and $2.997) failed to stem the surge of enthusiasm to buy November gas. By the time trading ended for the first week of October prompt gas added $.409 to last week’s close, putting some distance above last week’s first close over the 40 – week SMA since the peak of the December rally (Chart above). Friday’s extension of the rally also left November above its 40 – week and the continuation 50 – day SMA above the 200 – day for the first time since last November. Cannot define this as anything but positive technical events.

Another of the things that changed this week was that increases in volume and open interest accompanied the rally.You may recall that the lack of coordination between price and increases in the number of contracts outstanding and the number changing hands has been repeatedly discussed in the past (as recently as last week). Agreement of price change and market internals is critical for a sustainable trend. A week ago, their divergence was cited as the reason that the consensus of technical indicators failed to reach positive for the first time in many months. That flaw was cured this week. Higher prices (breakout over $3.02) with higher volume and expanding open interest matches the definition of a technical breakout.