Swoon

Recovering from Thursday’s 30-cent swoon and giving the recent rally a second lease on life, October natural gas futures pushed higher again during Friday’s regular session to close at $3.778, up 32 cents from Thursday’s finish and 81.8 cents higher than the previous week’s close.

A futures swoon of about $1.21 over the previous two days, abetted by further erosion of cooling load in some areas, led to further declines in most of the cash market Wednesday.

A couple of instances of flat numbers in the Northeast were conspicuous amid an overall softening Thursday. Weak fundamental weather support and falling energy futures Wednesday and Thursday prompted losses ranging from a little less than a nickel to 15 cents or so, with most declines weighing in at a dime or more.

Prices failed to fake out anyone Wednesday. With Tuesday’s latesoftness on the Nymex screen carrying over into Wednesday and thesubsidence of “the big bakeoff” in the Northeast, as one producercalled it, it didn’t take a crystal ball to make a bear marketcall. The larger declines on either side of a dime tended tocluster in the Gulf Coast, Appalachian, Northeast, Midcontinent andMidwest markets, while western drops generally were around a nickelor less. Unlike the late screen-related fallbacks reported Tuesday,traders said a number of points saw slight upticks in late dealsWednesday.

So far cash prices are following the script surrounding theFourth of July holiday weekend. As virtually every trader hadexpected, the market fell hard Thursday. “There were just no buyersout there,” complained one marketer. It was a fairly quiet daysince some gas had already been committed for the weekend onWednesday or earlier, and many people were anxious to get it doneand clear out early for the holiday, said another source.