Titanic

Coming off a Monday that featured a jittery Wall Street and a titanic tumble in energy commodities, April natural gas futures on Tuesday went into correction mode as some traders suggested that a more sideways-trending market coupled with high volatility lies ahead in the near term. The prompt-month contract reached a high of $9.420 before closing out the day at $9.414, up 31.4 cents from Monday.

The once Titanic-like TXU Corp. was bailing water at a furious pace Monday morning, after a devastating collision with European power markets. By 9 a.m., it had squeezed 80% from its once untouchable quarterly dividend, and cast adrift its European subsidiaries, sinking a plan to infuse $700 million in equity in operations, eliminating them from a cross-default provision on its $500 million bank facility and ultimately deciding that “all portions” of the European business are up for sale.

Last week was undoubtedly the most action-packed since the scandal enveloping Enron Corp. surfaced last fall, opening with the release of a scathing internal report that identified a corporate climate rife with self-dealing and self-enrichment schemes by Enron top officers, and closing with former CEO Jeffrey Skilling’s stunning testimony before Congress that he “unequivocally” believed Enron was on solid financial footing when he left the company in August 2001. He further disavowed knowing the controversial off-the-book partnerships that led to Enron’s collapse were intended to hide debt and inflate earnings.