June has ushered a familiar characteristic back into the naturalgas trading pit at Nymex: volatility. Natural gas and volatilityoften are spoken in the same breath. However, for periods thiswinter and spring, the dips and rallies that have drawn manytraders to natural gas have been largely suppressed. But now withsummer clsing in, June has been marked by choppy trading withweather bulls on one side and storage bears on the other. Analystsin the middle are mixed as to who will win the battle, but nearlyeveryone in the market agrees the “V” word is back to stay for awhile.

The bulls were able to shrug off another bearish AGA storagereport yesterday and push July to $2.20 in early trading. However,strong selling by commercial trade insued pushing the contract backdown. July settled at $2.144, down 3 cents for the day.

With the volatility expected to continue today, many tradersexpect the war to be waged between the $2.09-$2.22 with a break-outto one side or the other leading to strong follow-through in thedirection of the breakout. A chartist pegs $2.29 as resistance to amove higher with support at $2 and $1.915.

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