Cautious

With little in the way of fresh news on either the fundamentalor technical front, natural gas futures were left to limp lazilysideways Friday within a fairly tight 14.5-cent range. At theclosing bell, the December contract finished right about in themiddle, narrowly eking out at 1.1-cent gain to finish at $5.456.Activity was light as some traders observed the Veteran’s Dayholiday.

Cautious selling was met with light, scale-down buying pressureat the New York Mercantile Exchange Friday. And when the dust hadcleared and all the orders counted, both bulls and bears couldglean something positive from the session. Bulls were quick topoint to the $2.225 settlement, a 0.7-cent advance for the day.Bears, on the other hand, touted Friday’s lower high and lower lowas an indication the downtrend was still intact. Estimated volumeof 77,538 confirmed the heavy activity in the pit.

Several Wisconsin utilities and gas producers have asked FERC toplay it cautious when reviewing ANR Pipeline’s application for asecond capacity expansion of its existing system through northernIllinois and southern Wisconsin markets.

Several Wisconsin utilities and gas producers have asked FERC toplay it cautious when reviewing ANR Pipeline’s application for asecond capacity expansion of its existing system through northernIllinois and southern Wisconsin markets.