Quiet

Finding little if anything impressive in the way of newinfluences, cash prices in general decided to take it easy Monday.Other than some sizeable western increases, which consisted mainlyof regaining price territory lost on Friday, most quotes were flatto slightly higher. A moderately softer screen combined with hotweather and no sign of an Atlantic tropical storm gave the marketlittle guidance, a Midcontinent trader said. Storage activityseemed little changed from last week, he said.

For bull traders yesterday’s natural gas futures session was acase of “no news is bad news” as prices chopped lower in a raresub-50,000 volume session. As usually is the case the promptmonth-September-took the biggest hit, slipping 4.5 cents to finishat an even $2.70.

The futures market began the week in much the same fashion thatit concluded last week-quiet, range-bound trading where neitherbull nor bear could make much of an impact. After notching up to a$2.23 high late in the session Monday, the August contract filteredlower to settle at $2.207, a 2-cent gain for the day.

Activity in the natural gas pit at NYMEX has beenuncharacteristically quiet recently with low volatility and sub-5cent trading ranges the rule rather than the exception. In fact,the only real excitement in the past couple of weeks came Mondaywhen the July contract bounced 3 cents in a late rally. But eventhat was quickly dismissed by many traders who considered itnothing more than a freak, expiration-day anomaly in an otherwisesubdued market. Enter the August contract, which wasted little timeyesterday in moving dramatically higher in a rush of speculativeand commercial buying. The newly crowned prompt month finished up7.6 cents for the session at $2.400.

The overall market continued to consolidate mostly flatpositions Tuesday in another session of quiet trading and fairlytight price ranges. The little bit of movement tended to beslightly to the downside. Once again traders gleaned little in theway of guidance from a stagnant futures screen or from mild weatherfundamentals. A couple of sources seemed resigned to finishing outthe rest of the week in a sideways market.

Follow-through on last week’s gains and record-settingtemperatures put bulls squarely in control Monday in the Nymex gaspit. Locals and commercials were good buyers in the first hour oftrading yesterday as they buoyed the market to its highest level insix months. However, after the initial surge the market could notattract fresh buying and was left to chop sideways amid arelatively light 59,236 in estimated volume. The July contractfinished at $2.442, up 0.5 cents for the day.

“Orderly” and “quiet” are not words that typically describe thenatural gas futures market-especially during hectic expiration-daytrading at Nymex. However, yesterday they were fitting descriptionsof a market that was only able to inch higher amid light commercialshort-covering. The June contract closed out its tenure as theprompt month with a 2.6-cent gain to settle at $2.226.

After a hectic trading week that saw the June contract tradewithin a choppy, 15-cent range, traders tiptoed through Friday’snatural gas session. A late rally and retreat right before theclose of trading was the only real excitement in an otherwisefeatureless trading landscape. The June contract finished at$2.288, up 0.6 cents for the day and 1.5 cents for the week.

A chart gap, created when the one day’s high price is lower thanthe low price of a consecutive trading day is an eye sore to chartwatchers-they don’t like them and they will almost always try tofill them in by trading the market back between the “gap.” So itcame as no surprise when the first order of Friday’s trading wasfor the market to check lower in an attempt to fill in the 2-centgap left between Wednesday’s high of $2.18 and Thursday’s low of$2.20. It never made it. In fact, sellers could barely dent it andmanaged only a $2.195 low, before late buying lifted the promptmonth to just above unchanged Friday afternoon. May finished theweek at $2.226, a 0.1-cent gain for the day.