Range

Lacking much else in motivational factors beyond Tuesday’sfutures dive, cash prices softened Wednesday as expected.Across-the-board decreases ranged from barely a penny to as much asa dime. A Midcontinent marketer was surprised the drops weren’t anygreater than 2-5 cents in her region.

California regulators last week liberalized the use of utilityemployees in non-utility energy affiliate companies as part oftheir action finalizing a set of rules on the interaction betweenthe state’s three major electricity utilities and their affiliatedcompanies. With the advent of retail electric competition each ofthe utilities have several unregulated affiliates offering energysupplies and related services.

A modest nudge from the futures screen and a warming trend inmajor market areas that had been unseasonably cool in recent dayswere enough to generate an overall upturn in cash prices Tuesday.The increases ranged from negligible to just over a dime in somecases.

$2.43 continued to be a stubborn resistance level for the AugustNymex contract on Thursday, as yesterday marked the fourthconsecutive day the spot month failed to move above this key shortterm price objective. On the other hand, Thursday was also thefourth day in a row that August failed to move below key technicalsupport at $2.32. The inability for August to move significantly ineither direction helped lead the contract down 1.7 cents to settlethe day at $2.349.

The April Nymex contract finally broke out of its recent tradingrange by falling a relatively large 8.7 cents to $2.141 onThursday. “Today was massive long liquidation by funds, coupledwith weaker cash prices,” a broker told NGI. “The market droppedbelow the magic 40-day moving average (at $2.205), and fell belowtrendline support at $2.19. Both those things triggered a series ofstop loss orders, which helped propel April even lower. April lookspretty negative on the charts. There was a lot of technical damagetoday. The market will most likely want to continue to test thedown side,” he said.