Points

Despite some flat points here and there, the overall cash market continued to rise Thursday with gains that were mostly in single digits but reached nearly 15 cents in a few cases. And although a couple of sources confessed to seeing the weekend market as a tough call, majority sentiment looks for further price firmness Friday in spite of cold front forecasts for the Midwest and Northeast.

President Bush late Thursday vowed his administration would carry out an investigation to find out what triggered the cascading power blackouts that pulled the plug on up to 50 million people in New York City and other major cities across the Northeast, Midwest and in eastern Canada last week (see related story). Energy experts and analysts believe an aging electricity infrastructure was to blame. But a definitive answer, some say, could take weeks or months.

Flat numbers reigned across much of the market Tuesday, as a majority of points stayed within about a nickel up or down from unchanged. The gains tended to outweigh the losses, however, and most of the larger upticks occurred in the Rockies. Not coincidentally, the West remained the only market area experiencing severe summer heat.

Other than isolated softness at a couple of Rockies points and the Southern California border, the cash market ranged from flat to about a dime higher Wednesday. Although a majority of gains were quite small at a nickel or less, price movement was starting to be based more on hot-weather fundamentals and less on the screen’s previous-day performance.

Agreeing on some points and differing on others, meteorologists and forecasters are scrambling to diagnose the remaining months of summer. “The last 10 days of June are showing the true nature of the summer temperature and pattern ideas where they are hooked up with each other,” said AccuWeather Expert Senior Meteorologist Joe Bastardi. “Time will tell.”

To absolutely no one’s surprise, all points recorded major declines in swing trading for the weekend. Friday’s market had a lot going against it: the screen plunge a day earlier that was linked to the latest record-setting storage injection; the disappearance of very hot weather almost everywhere except for the desert Southwest and inland California; and the normal industrial load drop that accompanies a weekend.

All points joined Monday in rebounding from weekend softness, but except for sizable transportation constraint-linked gains of 30 cents or so at the Southern California border, San Juan Basin and the Rockies, other advances were more moderate at about 15 cents or less.

A few flat to barely lower points in the Midcontinent, Gulf Coast and Southwest mixed with moderate increases in the rest of the market Tuesday. Screen strength from the day before, along with continued storage buying, nuclear plant outages and power generation demand in the sultry South, were the major contributors to keeping this week’s cash bullishness from fading.

Nearly all points continued to climb Wednesday as winter weather began to pay a return visit to northern market areas and parts of the West. However, widespread late price retreats and expectations of the demand slump that typically accompanies a long weekend had sources anticipating softness Thursday.