Thursday’s market had a little something for everybody: large gains and losses coupled with small gains and losses, with a fair amount of flat pricing to boot. Moderating weather trends going into the weekend (except in much of the West) and the inclusion of a weekend flow day in Thursday’s trading competed with Wednesday’s 5.2-cent expiration-day gain by July futures for influence in the cash market.

Winners and losers were approximately evenly divided, with winners perhaps having a slight edge. Upticks of up to nearly a half a dollar in the Rockies led the way for rising points; outside the Rockies increases were capped at about 15 cents and many were close to flat.

The biggest declines of up to 75 cents occurred in the Northeast, which is cooling off considerably to highs in the 70s after seeing temperatures peak in the low 90s earlier in the week. Excluding the Northeast, the situation was similar to the rising points in that other losses were in single digits in nearly all cases and topped off around 15 cents.

It’s a virtual certainty that most, if not all, points will be much softer in Friday’s launch of the July aftermarket (because July starts on a Sunday, Thursday’s deals were for Friday-Saturday flows). Not only will temperatures continue their moderating trends in nearly all of the East and the Pacific Northwest, but the screen plunge of 42.8 cents Thursday will provide highly negative guidance for cash traders. In addition, the weekend drop in industrial load will be a factor.

The major move downward by August futures in their debut as the prompt-month contract was in response to a highly bearish storage report. The Energy Information Administration estimated a 99 Bcf injection for the week ending June 22, which greatly exceeded consensus estimates in the low to mid 80s Bcf. “Stocks were 90 Bcf less than last year at this time and 372 Bcf above the [five]-year average of 2,071 Bcf,” EIA said.

If any region has a chance of resisting declines Friday, it is the West, where weekend highs will be five to 15 degrees above average from the desert Southwest all the way to Montana, according to The Weather Channel.

The South will be cooling off through the weekend, but temperatures in the 90s will quickly return starting around Tuesday. For the time being, though, power generation load in the South likely was the reason that Gulf Coast softening was much less that in the Northeast.

It was a quiet trading day for a Calgary-based producer, who said, “We mostly just sat there and watched the Merc [Nymex] get slaughtered.” That 99 Bcf storage injection seemed very much “out of the box,” he commented. He had heard an unconfirmed rumor of a hedge fund having problems with its gas futures position.

Very few people were still trading July baseload Thursday, the producer went on. As soon as next-month futures go off the board, almost everyone tries to wind up bidweek business that afternoon, he said. He estimated $6.82 would be the Chicago citygate index, but noted that 10 MMcf/d of Chicago gas had traded at $6.80 Thursday.

Summer has definitely arrived here, a Florida utility buyer said. Bidweek was routine, she added, with plenty of suppliers eager to sell gas to her company. She was a bit dismayed to learn that in the daily market the utility recorded the highest Gulf Coast production-area prices of about $7.00 at Florida Gas Zone 3.

Cooler temperatures in the Midwest after a cold front moved through certainly makes a difference, a marketer in the region said. Her area had seen a lot of heat and humidity through Wednesday. She reported buying at $6.93 on Consumers Energy in the daily market, and said bidweek basis for her company was plus 10 cents for both Consumers and MichCon.

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