Traders

The cash market made another big surge Monday as traders debatedwhether storage worries or new weather forecasts carried the mostweight in the renewed bullishness. Gains tended to range from abouta quarter to more than a dollar in Transco’s Zone 6 pools in theNortheast. Some production area points were exceeding January indexlevels.

Propelled by heavy market-on-close (MOC) buying, natural gasfutures spiked to a new all-time high yesterday, as commercialtraders hedged their financial swap positions. After gapping higheron the open, the January contract rallied to $9.90 on rumors thatthere would be commercial buying at the close. Those rumors turnedout to be true and after sinking lower for much of the session, theprompt month raced back to $9.90 moments before the closing bell.January finished at $9.83, up 50.4 cents on the day.

It’s been a long wait, but traders are finally seeing what theysaid was needed to spark a turnaround in a sagging gas market:genuinely substantial cold weather approaching a major market area.That and continued, albeit moderate, support from the Decemberfutures contract generated cash price increases Thursday rangingfrom a nickel or less in the Rockies and California to between anickel and about 15 cents in the Southwest, Gulf Coast,Midcontinent, Midwest and Appalachia.

With little in the way of fresh fundamental news, natural gasfutures traded mostly sideways yesterday as traders rested after atumultuous 10 days of trading activity. A modest gain in the promptmonth was more than offset by losses in each of the out months.November finished up 0.5 cents at $4.664 while the 12-month stripclosed 1.6 cents lower at $4.313.

Is the market in early meltdown stage? At least one traderthought so, saying, “Yep, it sure looks that way” after the screentacked on a second straight day of double-digit losses Wednesdayand was joined by the cash market recording price drops rangingbetween a dime and a little more than 20 cents.

A stable of some of the leading energy companies have partnered up to form TradeSpark, an electronic marketplace powered by developer eSpeed Inc., that will offer natural gas, electricity, coal, weather derivatives and emissions credits through the Internet, private enterprise or via voice brokers beginning this week.

A stable of some of the leading energy companies have partneredup to form TradeSpark, an electronic marketplace powered bydeveloper eSpeed Inc., that will offer natural gas, electricity,coal, weather derivatives and emissions credits through theInternet, private enterprise or via voice brokers beginning Oct. 2.

Fueled by gains in nearby crude oil pit, it was up, up and awayonce again for natural gas futures as traders added to their betsthat the market will experience supply woes this winter. As itturns out, that was more than enough buying to propel natural gasfutures to double gains and the second highest prompt monthsettlement price in the commodity’s 10-year history.

Cash traders returned from the long holiday weekend Wednesday tofind most of the market turning considerably softer, and it’s asafe bet that prices will keep falling today, since the entireenergy futures complex was getting clobbered Wednesday, sourcessaid.