Looked

For a while Thursday it looked like August prices would keeprunning higher based on a strong screen, continued heavy powergeneration load and Wednesday afternoon’s super-bullish storagereport. However, the uptrend crested and began subsiding a bit whena late “meltdown” occurred in September futures, sources said.

Fresh off Wednesday’s advance the futures market looked poisedto continue higher Thursday as early buying prompted the market upat the open. However, a 25-cent gain in two days was more than eventhe greediest of bulls could handle, and the market reacted bytrending down. That left the November contract with a 1.9 cent lossto settle at $2.414 at the final bell.

Futures came under heavy selling pressure early in the dayMonday, and the market never looked back as traders began discountto the threat of Hurricane Georges causing a major impact to gasproduction. “There was only one certainty you could bank on cominginto the market [Monday] morning. Momentum-whichever way the marketmoved at the open would dictate the direction for the rest of thetrading session,” a New York broker said. The October contract wasdealt the largest losses, slipping 15 cents to limp off the boardat $2.031.

The futures market opened stronger Wednesday, and looked poisedto remain range-bound ahead of the weekly American Gas Association(AGA) storage report. But a crowd of sellers came out in theafternoon, sending the September contract down 6.8 cents to $1.917.Estimated volume was 83,479.

Natural gas futures looked poised to continue to trend lowerlast Friday amid abundant physical supply and having justreestablished the downtrend that began on April 8th. However,weather forecasts calling for the warmest temperatures of thesummer and solid “bargain buying” in the cash market was enough tolift August 3.3 cents to settle at $2.165.

The July Nymex contract looked poised to build on gainsyesterday by opening strong then immediately testing resistance inthe $2.20-21 area. However, for the second day in a row resistanceheld, leading to profit taking that sent July spiraling down tosettle at $2.156, a 3.5-cent loss for the day.