Bell

The board of directors of the New York Mercantile Exchange hasamended plans to move up the start-up time for natural gas futurestrading because of the overlap with crude oil markets, which sharean options ring with natural gas. Daily gas futures trading nowwill commence at 9:30 a.m. rather than 9:45. The board hasscheduled expanded energy trading hours to begin with the Sept. 8trading session.

After a lower open at the bell yesterday, the futures marketmoved higher and easily recouped Tuesday’s losses. The Julycontract finished up 6.7 cents and in doing so registered anoutside up-day on the daily charts.

While no one is ringing the alarm bell and shouting about asupply crunch, near-term Gulf of Mexico gas supplies are expectedby many to suffer from depletions and diminished drilling due tolow prices.

The futures market shrugged off another bearish AGA storagereport and quietly traded higher at Nymex Thursday. After testingsupport in the $1.88-89 span early, the September contractrebounded to the mid-$1.90s where it remained in afternoon trade.The prompt month settled at $1.953, up 3.6 cents on the day.