Natural gas futures gained Tuesday despite revised forecasts for warm weather to last into mid-November, as traders squared their books ahead of the November-delivery contract’s expiration. The contract rose 8.8 cents, or 2.5%, to end at $3.649 a million British thermal units on the New York Mercantile Exchange. Options on the November contract expired with the close of trading Tuesday and the contract itself expires Wednesday. Most of the volume in the market has moved forward into the December contract, which settled up 2.6% at $3.731/mmBtu. Analysts and brokers said the pending expirations drove trading, particularly investors closing out bearish trades against the market by buying futures to cover their positions. “The market sold down hard over the last two weeks,” said Tom Saal, a broker with INTL FCStone. “There’s short-covering, and we’re rolling into a new front-month.” Short-covering comes when a trader cashes out of […]