Fade

Once again, strong movement the day before in the energy futures complex failed to elicit a similar response from the cash market. Nearly all points were close to flat Tuesday, and the few up-and-down changes were limited to about a nickel or so in both directions.

Like a weary traveller who comes home to gracefully pass on, the November contract moved quietly sideways and lower in expiration-day trading Wednesday as traders contemplated a market that had fallen perilously close to new one-year prompt-month lows after having soared during the month of October.

Last week’s market rally was starting to fade in trading for the weekend. Eastern points were mixed Friday, with price movement both up and down, but trending largely toward the downside, while the West was solidly in a softening mode with considerably larger declines.

A weather forecast that had ignited bullish hopes late last week(see Daily GPI, Feb. 2) appeared to begetting heavily discounted Monday. The result was huge downturns inboth cash and futures prices. California led the way with dollar-plusdrops, and all other markets were falling between about 50 cents and adollar.

Although “storm hype” was a popular phrase in market discussionsThursday, the hype factor was beginning to fade in the afternoon asTropical Storm Bret achieved named status, prompting the Mexicangovernment to post coastal storm warnings from Tampico southward.Some strengthening of Bret is likely over the next 24 hours, theNational Hurricane Center said in a 4 p.m. CDT advisory.

Chalk up another Gulf storm as more sound than fury with a onlya short-term impact on the cash market. Even as Tropical StormFrances caused heavy flooding along the Texas and Louisiana coastsFriday (preventing a number of Houston traders from getting to theoffice), prices were flat to down a nickel or so at Eastern points.Sources said much of the softness Friday, following on average10-cent increases Thursday, was based on the belief that much ofthe Gulf production losses would be moderating over the weekend.