Losses

Taking a cue from Thursday’s Access trade sell-off, the futuresmarket continued lower Friday as traders fully discounted thecurrent trio of storms by aggressively exiting their longpositions. By 2:40 p.m., the September contract had fallen justshort of filling in the chart gap down to $2.805. However, $2.83was all that the sellers could muster and prices rallied in thelast 30 minutes of trading. The September contract settled at$2.912, down 3.6 cents for the day but up more than 8 cents fromits earlier low.

Western Resources yesterday threatened to cut its losses andsell the company to a national energy conglomerate because of adecision by the Kansas Corporation Commission (KCC) to reopen thedocket on its merger with Kansas City Power and Light. The KCCissued an order late Monday to reopen the merger docket because ofa stipulation and agreement Western signed with the Missouri PublicService Commission staff and others in the Missouri docket.

Natural gas futures continued lower in an abbreviatedpre-holiday trading session Friday, adding to losses achievedWednesday and Thursday and stifling the hopes of bulls who werelooking for short-covering buying into the long weekend. The Augustcontract finished down 2.2 cents on the day at $2.287, 13.3 centsless than Wednesday’s high price. Estimated volume was an extremelymodest 28,784.

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.

After plumbing to the lowest levels in over a month Monday, thefutures market rallied yesterday as scale down commercial buyingreceived unexpected support from local traders eager to reverseshort positions. The June contract finished at $2.200, up 2.4 centsfor the day.

Chevron announced late Friday it adjusted its 1998 earnings toaccommodate $637 million in “potential losses” due to an OklahomaSupreme Court decision last week affirming a lower court’s rulingagainst the integrated oil and gas company. Chevron said it stillplans to seek aggressive review of the case.

All the ingredients were right for the futures market to spirallower yesterday-a softer cash market, continued bearish weatherforecasts, and an abundance of ready-to-expire March $1.65 and$1.70 put options. But for some reason, all of those factors werenot enough to inspire a sustained round of selling, leaving theMarch contract to chop to either side of unchanged before finishingwith a 0.6-cent gain to $1.71.

The futures market was poised to continue lower Wednesday, butafter a lower open failed to entice additional selling,short-covering became the feature of the day. That gave theDecember contract the opportunity it needed to trend into positiveterritory yesterday morning, before settling at $2.213 at theclosing bell. Estimated volume was 75,306.

The futures market experienced heavy expiration-day lossesyesterday, adding to price erosion that occurred Tuesday. Novemberwas particularly hard hit, slipping 13.6 cents to settle at $1.972.Weak October cash prices and follow-through selling by traders whohave elected to ignore and discount the threat of Hurricane Mitchwere reasons cited for the decline. Trading was active, with nearly150,000 contracts changing hands.