Subdued

In activity that was predictably very subdued for a day leadinginto the long Christmas weekend, prices ranged from flat to down afew cents Thursday. As one source commented, “Man, I’ve seen deadmarkets before, but this one seems to be rotting in the grave.”Somewhat in keeping with that remark, a marketer said many of hertrading partners had only “skeleton crews” in the office, andvirtually nobody was still around after lunchtime.

After a somewhat subdued trading session Tuesday, natural gasfutures sprang back to life Wednesday in a see-saw battle betweenstorage bears and weather bulls. But, when the dust had settled itwas the bulls who took the day, leading one Houston-based trader tosurmise “weather is always king in natural gas.” The prompt Januarycontract settled up 3.8 cents at $1.99 in the regular tradingsession, before adding an additional 4 cents to finish at $2.03 inlast night’s Access session.

In what a few sources described as some of the quietest tradingthey had seen in quite a while, cash quotes fell anywhere from 2cents to a dime or so at Eastern points Monday. In contrast,numbers were generally flat to slightly higher for the Rockies,Southwest basins, California and intra-Alberta.

The futures market moved quietly higher in fairly subduedtrading on Friday until a round of position squaring and freshbuying boosted the market before the close. That was enough topropel the September contract above its recent trading range tosettle at $1.877, a 6-cent advance on the day.

Following two days of active trading and sizable price swingsthe futures market traded quietly to either side of unchanged onWednesday. September futures closed at $1.819, managing a 0.7-centgain on the day.

Trading at the New York Mercantile Exchange was once againsubdued on Tuesday, as many traders seemed to stand to thesidelines in anticipation of the release of the AGA storage reportlater this evening. Amid what trading did get accomplished, theJune contract inched 1.5 cents higher to settle the day at $2.149.