Trends

A confluence of positive trends, including continued robustness in wholesale energy trading activity, helped to propel first quarter 2001 earnings at energy marketing and trading powerhouse Enron Corp. and its energy marketing competitor Dynegy Inc. above and beyond expectations previously locked in by Wall Street analysts.

Unlike the East-West price movement division that markedFriday’s and Monday’s trading, the cash market returned Tuesday toa unified trend that resembled last Thursday’s: down considerably.

A report released last week by the newly named Gas TechnologyInstitute (created by the merger of GRI and the Institute of GasTechnology) predicts that technological advances will increase theeconomic lower-48 resource base by 250 Tcf and Canadian recoverableresources by 125 Tcf.

A report released yesterday by the newly named Gas TechnologyInstitute (created by the merger of GRI and the Institute of GasTechnology) predicts that technological advances will increase theeconomic lower-48 resource base by 250 Tcf and Canadian recoverableresources by 125 Tcf.

Nearly all of the market points in NGI’s price survey declinedfor the second day in a row Monday amid mild weather, a fallingfutures screen and the return of some nuclear power stations. Whilepoints in the Northeast felt the sharpest declines ranging from adime to 20 cents, Chicago managed to fight off most of the bearishsentiment and registered a small drop of 2 cents.

Futures traders are always looking to historical price patternsto predict future trends, but last week they were particularlyfocused on the last 40 trading days and the average of thosesettlement prices. Referred to as the 40-day, the prompt month’s40-day moving average has been an increasingly important indicatorfor those looking to predict a price move in the market. But boththe magnitude and duration of those swings have decreased in thepast several weeks, leading traders to hypothesize some of thedynamics in the market could be changing. Some of those changeshave been evidenced by the December contract’s inability to sustaina move much above or below the 40-day moving average in recentweeks. And last Friday was no different when the December contractrebounded 6.5 cents to settle at $2.459, just 1.4 cents below the40-day.

Last week’s trading wound up wound up with a reversal ofregional price trends. Whereas in the first couple of days of theweek Western points were recording gains while the stagnant Easternmarket was mostly flat to a little lower, the West was falling hardFriday but the East was flat to 2-3 cents higher. The Easternfirmness came as a surprise to some traders who had expected mildweather and the usual slump in weekend load to yield modest pricedeclines.