Crater

Reacting primarily to the previous day’s meltdown in energy futures, with a side nod to the general lack of substantive weather-related load outside the northern half of the West and to overflowing storage inventories, the cash market was in massive retreat Thursday. Losses exceeded a dollar across the board, with many points falling more than a dollar and a half.

After trading higher for most of the session, natural gasfutures tumbled lower in the last hour of trading as traders wereable to look past higher crude oil prices to instead focus onbearish storage and weather concerns. As is usually the case, theprompt month led the charge, falling 21.1 cents lower to close at$5.228.

Given mild weather, bearish storage levels and the normal slumpin weekend demand, many traders were surprised Friday to see nearlyall Eastern points stay flat or go up as much as 3-4 cents. ThoughGulf Coast numbers were “falling hard” near deadline after startingseveral cents higher, a producer surmised they were being held upat first by “hurricane hype.” Other sources also mentioned that asthe reason for the relative Eastern strength, saying they couldthink of no other explanation.