Sore

Americans are fuming about retention bonuses paid to executives at bailed-out American International Group; they’re sore from the stock market crash, and they still remember sky-high gasoline and home-heating costs of not so long ago. In other words, “the people are not happy,” a Washington, DC, lawyer told energy traders in Houston Thursday before letting them in on the “craziness that’s going on in Washington with respect to your business.”

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.

Michigan citygates and intra-Alberta numbers stuck out like sorethumbs Wednesday in an incremental cash market where all otherpoints were dropping between a nickel and 20 cents. A furtherdecline in the November futures contract combined with continuingmild weather and the perception that Hurricane Mitch is only a veryremote threat to offshore production to cause the cash softness,sources said.