Swing

Those who expected the swing cash market to use Mondayafternoon’s cash run-up and continued futures strength Tuesdaymorning as a springboard were not disappointed. Late-March quoteswere moving higher by double-digit amounts at nearly every point inall market areas, although few increases exceeded 10-12 centsexcept in the Rockies and Northeast.

Flat pricing dominated much of the swing market Monday, butquotes ranged to about a nickel higher in the Midcontinent/Midwestand Southwest/California regions. Colder Midwest weather and a bitof chill on the West Coast built up some extra demand in thosemarkets, traders said.

The March swing market continued to roar in like a lionWednesday, and it appeared that many traders are betting it won’tturn into a lamb between now and the end of the month.

The somewhat surprising recent firmness of swing prices held uponce again in most cases Friday, refusing to yield to either thenormal drop in weekend demand or a continuing dearth of fundamentalweather support.

A futures screen that was almost a dime higher during morningcash trading and continued cold temperatures were enough to allowprices to put even more distance between themselves and indexesTuesday. Meanwhile, transport-constrained Northeast citygates wereback for a repeat performance of their skyrocket act from lateJanuary.

For the most part, late-December incremental prices continued todrift lower by small amounts Tuesday in quiet activity as tradersincreasing focused their attention on January business. Evenbidweek was still dragging, complained a Midcontinent producer;”there’s lot of talking, but few actual deals.”

Swing trading for the last day of November saw prices rising bydouble-digit amounts at nearly every point Monday except in theRockies. The fact that post-holiday temperatures had grownconsiderably colder in the East were a partial factor in theincreases; however, sources said it were the avoidance of payingeven higher November cash-out prices to the pipelines that wasprimarily behind the incremental push higher.

Late-November swing prices got “crushed” Monday, burdened bothtechnically by a slumping futures screen and fundamentally by acontinuing surplus of unseasonably warm weather, a Texas-basedproducer lamented. Virtually all points dropped between a nickeland about 15 cents, with declines in the vicinity of a dime beingmost common.

Much like futures, swing price movement came to a nearstandstill Tuesday. Small declines of mostly less than 4 centstended to outweigh the few small scattered gains, but the overalleffect was pancake-like. Few areas were any more than moderatelychilly, and even the Upper Plains, where most Arctic cold frontsstart spreading into the U.S., was seeing temperatures in the 70s.Forecasters reported an absolutely featureless Atlantic stormoutlook.