Bear Mountain Bull

The Nasdaq has moved down more than 50 points, then back up more than 50 over the past 4 days, yet volume hasn’t changed much at all. Apparently investors aren’t quite clear on which is the ‘right’ direction.

Chart courtesy of StockCharts.com

Merger news, economic data and lower energy prices helped push the market higher on the last day of October, with the major indices working their way back to levels not seen since the first week of the month. The majors gave up some ground late in the day, but the Dow still finished up 37 points (+0.4%) at 10440. The S&P 500 picked up 9 points (+0.7%) to 1207, and the Nasdaq led the pack, gaining 30 points (+1.5%) to 2120. The Russell 2000 was higher by 11 points (+1.8%) to 647, the Dow Transports gained 2.0% and the Utilities were up 1.3%. Bonds drifted higher, moving yields down just a bit – the 5-year stands at 4.45% and the 10-year at 4.56%.

Market internals reflected the positive price action, and volume picked up a bit on the NYSE, but has held very steady on the Nasdaq for about 4 days now. Advances led declines by better than 3 to 1 on the NYSE and about 7 to 3 on the Nasdaq, with up/down volume at better than 4 to 1 on both exchanges. New highs finally caught back up with new lows: highs/lows were 105/90 on the NYSE and 111/54 on the Nasdaq.

Leading the groups higher today were the airlines, getting a 3.9% boost as energy prices come down. Retailers had a big day, up 2.5%, followed by computer hardware (+2.4%), disk drives (+2.4%), transportation stocks (+2.4%), biotechs (+2.1%), housing (+2.0%), brokers (+2.0%), semiconductors (+1.8%), internets (+1.8%), networking stocks (+1.8%), insurers (+1.7%) and oil stocks (+1.7%). No groups tracked by BMB were in the red.

Crude oil took a dive today — the TV folk are telling me it was on a warmer-than-expected winter weather forecast. Whatever. I’m not convinced that weather forecasters can tell me what temps will be 3 days from now let alone 3 months from now. But traders sold on the news, sending oil down $1.46/barrel to $59.76. Natural gas slid well below the $13 mark to $12.20/mBTU, down 85 cents. That’s good – wonder if it will hold. The dollar rallied along with stocks, pushing the dollar index up 0.6% to 90.07. Gold fell about $7 to $465/ounce.

BMB Note: Nice moves the past couple of days, and the moves have been broad-based, but haven’t been on spectacular volume. Hard to determine where leadership might emerge when most stocks are moving up together. The indices are now poking up above their declining 50-day moving averages, nearing their respective downtrend lines, and pushing into resistance built up over 3 months time. We’ll see if the power is there to move higher over the next few weeks.

Tomorrow the Fed will kick up rates another quarter-point. Also, we’ve got a warning from Dell after the bell.

Gary K. says that the financials could give the S&P an upward boost, but cautions that even an upward move at this point doesn’t ‘make it all better’:

Please do not think this will change all the damage that has been done over the past couple of months. There are still many more stocks and sectors in poor technical shape than in good technical shape. I am just saying that the make up of the indices are helping out and do believe there could be more upside testing. This is just a near-term call as I will wait for the market to decide whether it wants to break out of this 20-month range to the upside or the downside. In any case, stay on your toes…as I suspect we will get more of the spastic action we have been seeing…not less.

We’re seeing a little bit of the continuation of Friday’s upward move today, and some of the formerly downtrending groups – retail, restaurants, housing and the like – have flattened out and turned upward over the past few weeks. How far does it go? I’m hard pressed to believe it goes very far, but I’ve been wrong before.

There are an awful lot of folks expecting the market to ‘pop’ here. The question is, how much ‘pop’ and how long would it last. According to Schaeffer’s weekly wrap, signs of a ‘bottom’ here aren’t all that convincing, and investors don’t seem real eager to dive in and buy.

Neither am I.

Not too much negative going on this morning, with the majors holding on to solid gains thus far. The only group moving lower are the gold & silver stocks, while airlines, housing stocks, biotechs, retailers and transportation stocks lead the way up. Lower energy prices are helping out, as crude oil has fallen more than a dollar per barrel, natural gas is lower by 80 cents, and gasoline down 4 cents. That’s good news for everyone’s pocketbook.

Bonds are higher as well, holding yields down. The dollar is up, and gold is lower.

The morning report showing both incomes and inflation up doesn’t seem to have been taken as bad news.

In Bill Fleckenstein’s opinion, the new Fed chief is in a trap, and there’s no way out. (Here is a link to the NY Times op-ed that Fleck references in his column. It’s worth a read.)

BMB has thought for some time that the Fed is caught between a rock and a hard place. Fleckenstein mentions the inflation problem and weakening economy – I would add to that a fundamentally weak dollar that will continue to crumble without support from interest rates. No doubt, there will be interesting times ahead.

From “Reminiscences of a Stock Operator” by Edwin Lefevre, the 1923 classic pseudo-autobiography of legendary trader Jesse Livermore:

… I didn’t always win. My plan of trading was sound enough and won oftener than it lost. If I had stuck to it I’d have been right perhaps as often as seven out of ten times. In fact, I always made money when I was sure I was right before I began. What beat me was not having brains enough to stick to my own game — that is, to play the market only when I was satisfied that precedents favored my play. There is a time for all things, but I didn’t know it. And that is precisely what beats so many men in Wall Street who are very far from being in the main sucker class. There is the plain fool, who does the wrong thing at all times everywhere, but there is the Wall Street fool, who thinks he must trade all the time. No man can always have adequate reasons for buying or selling stocks daily — or sufficient knowledge to make his play an intelligent play.

Sometimes the best play is to not play at all. When playing the market, you have to let the opportunities come to you, and take advantage of them when the odds are in your favor. If you don’t, you’ll get very frustrated — and you’ll lose money.

Items of note on the latest industry moves:

• A rebound in energy and commodity related stocks this week. Even more industrial types, like steel and chemicals, are bouncing back a bit.
• Housing stocks still not getting any lift. I’m not sure that even lower interest rates would help at this point.
• On the tech front, semiconductors are in the doghouse. And the disk drive group, which had been holding up well, gave some back this week.
• The pullback in energy prices have helped the airlines and transportation stocks. Don’t know how long that will last.
• Banks have done a little better in the past few weeks. I wouldn’t expect a big run in the banks, however, as long as the interest rate picture remains as cloudy as it is.

An interesting article this week from Jim Puplava at Financial Sense. In it, he attempts to clear up the misconception that inflation just ‘happens’, or is the result of evil or greedy corporations. Instead, he points out that the rising prices we see as inflation are but a symptom of the problem – not the cause:

Ask any person today what causes inflation and they will tell you that it is rising prices. Like many issues on money, the inflation issue is clouded and confused. That is because the inflationists want it that way. By focusing attention on rising prices, it takes the attention away from the cause, which is excess money creation. Instead, all of the attention is focused on the symptoms of the disease rather than the root of it.

There are only three ways that prices can rise. The most important influences are as follows:

1. The supply of money and credit
2. Supply of goods and services
3. Demand for goods and services

Prices can increase by:

1. Increasing the supply of money
2. A decrease in the supply of goods and services
3. An increase in demand, i.e. population increase

Conversely, prices can decrease by the same three measures when:

1. The supply of money declines
2. The supply of goods and services increases
3. Demand decreases

These are the only three ways that prices can increase or decline.

Later in the article, Mr. Puplava addresses the Washington hit job currently being mounted against the major oil companies:

On the day this was written ExxonMobil, ConocoPhillips and Microsoft all reported third quarter profits. Exxon Mobil reported sales of $100 billion and profits of $9.9 billion. ConocoPhillips reported sales of $49.7 billion and profits of $3.8 billion. Microsoft reported that sales rose to $9.7 billion and profits rose to $3.14 billion. ExxonMobil earned a 9.9% return on sales; ConocoPhillips earned a net return on sales of 7.65%. Microsoft’s profits reflect a return of 32.2% on sales.

The rise in ExxonMobil’s and ConocoPhillips’ profits promptly called for a windfall profits tax to be imposed on the oil companies. Microsoft’s profits of 32.2% on sales called for no similar action nor were there calls for windfall profits taxes on homebuilders, banks, and other technology companies who all reported higher profits on sales. The oil companies have become the government’s new whipping boy for government-created inflation. The object of course is distraction and shifting the blame.

On hearing of ExxonMobil’s profits, Senate majority leader Bill Frist said oil company executives will be called to testify at a hearing on the reasons of high energy prices. House majority leader Dennis Hastert pleaded with oil companies to find new sources of oil, natural gas, and build new refineries. On the same day a partisan fight in the Senate doomed a new federal incentive to increase the nation’s oil refinery capacity for at least another year. According to The Wall Street Journal, the Senate Environment and Public Works Committee deadlocked 9-9 over a Republican proposal that would streamline federal and state permit procedures for companies that want to build refineries or expand plants. Eight Democrats and one Republican voted to block the measure. A Democratic strategist said the Democrats see political opportunities in recent announcements of high oil company profits and plan on using it as an election issue in next year’s congressional races.

Now I’m not too sure about energy price inflation being “government-created”, and I believe Mr. Puplava would agree that current energy price inflation has just as much to do with supply/demand issues as it does the increased money supply. But I do agree that the current attack on the oil companies is way out of line.

Leave it to our politicians to find opportunity in times of distress — and of course, to try to seize the opportunity rather than relieve the distress. Instead of addressing the problem by providing incentives for oil companies to find and produce more oil and refined product, thus possibly increasing supply and bringing prices down, they take the opposite approach: try to tax the companies even more (for certainly that will be a popular move with many), thus removing any incentive for those companies to find and produce more products, surely keeping prices high and probably driving them higher.

Brilliant. And totally disgusting.

	Energy stocks had the best week, but that’s easy to do when they were as beaten down as they were. The XLE isn’t out of the woods yet, and needs to hold above support at 45 to avoid another leg down.
	The second best performance of the week came from the Basic Materials stocks, but like the XLE, the XLB is coming off some pretty low levels. Nothing to get excited about here yet.
	Financials are leading the way over the 8-week period. This after a straight-line move up off the lows, which pushes the XLF back to the top of a 3-month range.
	Consumer staples are the second-best over 8-weeks. That’s not saying much, considering the XLP is unchanged over that time frame.

The numbers as the market closes out a lousy October:

Charts courtesy of StockCharts.com

From the advance GDP report released today by the Commerce Department:

Personal outlays increased $169.0 billion (7.7 percent) in the third quarter, compared with an increase of $146.6 billion (6.8 percent) in the second. Personal saving — disposable personal income less personal outlays — was a negative $100.1 billion in the third quarter, compared with $7.4 billion in the second. The personal saving rate — saving as a percentage of disposable personal income — decreased from 0.1 percent in the second quarter to a negative 1.1 percent in the third. Saving from current income may be near zero or negative when outlays are financed by borrowing (including borrowing financed through credit cards or home equity loans), by selling investments or other assets, or by using savings from previous periods.

For whatever reason, the market pushed higher today – quite a bit higher. Why? Was it the CIA leak indictment? Or lack of other indictments? The morning GDP report? The end of the fiscal year for mutual funds? The Friday before Halloween? It doesn’t matter. We don’t care about the why, we deal with what is.

The Dow Industrials had their healthiest gain in quite some time, moving up 173 points (+1.7%) to 10403. The S&P 500 also posted a healthy gain of 19 points (+1.7%) to 1198, while the Nasdaq lagged just a bit, adding 26 points (+1.3%) to 2090. The Russell 2000 bounced back with a 11 point gain (+1.8%) to 635. The Dow Transports were up 1.8% and the Utilities got back 2.3%. Bonds were down slightly, pushing yields up to 4.45% on the 5-year and 4.57% on the 10-year.

Market internals were strongly positive, but volume was pretty consistent with the levels of the past few days. Advances led declines by 14 to 5 on the NYSE and 2 to 1 on the Nasdaq, with up/down volume a hefty 6 to 1 on the NYSE but just under 2 to 1 on the Nasdaq. New highs/lows were 53/153 on the NYSE and 53/111 on the Nasdaq.

Nearly every group was higher today, with the semiconductor index being the only stick in the mud, dropping 0.7%. Leading the move up were natural gas stocks (+3.2%), HMOs (+3.0%), steel stocks (+3.0%), REITs (+2.8%), oil services (+2.8%), airlines (+2.6%), retailers (+2.6%), oil stocks (+2.5%), transportation (+2.5%), natural resources (+2.3%), housing (+2.2%), utilities (+2.2%) and commodities (+2.1%).

Energy prices were mixed, with crude oil up 13 cents to $61.22/barrel, but natural gas plunging 63 cents to $13.05/mBTU. Gasoline was up a couple of cents to $1.62/gallon. The dollar also rallied, pushing the dollar index up 0.5% to 89.58. Gold held pretty steady at just under $473/ounce.

BMB Note: As strong as today’s price action was, it wasn’t exactly a landscape changing performance. Volume held pretty steady from where it has been, and the indices really only moved back up toward the top of their recent ranges – except for the Nasdaq, which didn’t even come close to breaking above yesterday’s highs. Really, today was just another wild swing, consistent with the action of the past few weeks. This one just happened to swing back to the upside. We’ve had 3 or 4 of these big up days in the last couple of weeks, and they haven’t amounted to much of anything. And the big trading ranges have just made it that much more difficult to decide what to do.

Let’s see if we can string a few of these days together and break the downtrends off the August highs. Maybe then we can talk.

Dealing with this market is a lot like dealing with a very moody person – you just never know what type of reaction you’re going to get from one day to the next, and there’s no rhyme or reason to the behavior.

For the last two or three days, the market was in a bad mood – today it’s happy, for no real good reason. The Dow and S&P have reigned back in most of their losses from yesterday, the Nasdaq, a little less than half. Nearly every group is trading higher. The CIA leak probe has finally come out with their indictment of Libby, and now he’s resigned. Ok, so that story-that-isn’t-really-a-market-moving-story-anyway is over with, at least for now.

This is tough. The wild swings and lack of trend make this a very difficult environment for both trading and investing. Obviously, the bulls and bears are waging quite a battle over these past few weeks, and right now it isn’t clear at all who the winner will be.

Earnings news seems to be more of a driving force in certain areas of the market more than the GDP report has been. The majors started off pretty well into the green but have pulled back. Moving higher so far are the airlines, REITs and HMOs. On the losing side, semiconductors are getting smacked down pretty hard on earnings and downgrades on MXIM. Also giving up ground are oil services and natural resources. Coal stocks are getting hurt on earnings news from MEE.

Bonds are showing little movement. The dollar is up a bit, and gold down slightly. Energy prices are holding pretty steady.

The media seems a little over-obsessed with the goings-on in Washington and the CIA leak case. From the market’s point of view – and my own – I just don’t think it matters very much.

Third quarter GDP rose 3.8%, compared to 3.2% in Q2.

But remember, we always have to understand what’s behind these numbers. A gentleman on Bloomberg was just pointing out that 0.6% of the GDP number was from auto sales, when the auto makers were giving away cars and losing money in the process. He didn’t believe that activity would be sustainable.

Hey, you gotta give this market credit. Just when you think it couldn’t look much worse, it surprises you with an even more pathetic performance.

Another ugly day today, with nothing good to speak of. The Dow Industrials unloaded 115 points (-1.1%) to finish at 10230, the S&P 500 dropped 12 points (-1.1%) to 1179 and the Nasdaq dumped 36 points (-1.7%) to 2064. Ugly stuff. The Russell 2000 was even worse, losing 14 points (-2.3%) to 624. The Dow Transports fell 1.6% and the Utilities dropped 1.3%. Bonds recovered a bit after falling hard the last few days, pushing yields down: the 5-year to 4.43% and the 10-year to 4.56%.

Market internals were horrible, but volume was down just a bit from yesterday’s levels. Advances/declines were just better than 1 to 3 on the NYSE, but worse than 1 to 3 on the Nasdaq. Up/down volume came in at worse than 1 to 4 on the NYSE and worse than 1 to 6 on the Nasdaq. Really ugly. New highs/lows were 40/229 on the NYSE and 42/128 on the Nasdaq.

Nothing good at all in the groups today, with the down side big and bad. Leading the disaster were the networking stocks, down 3.2%, followed by housing (-3.0%), natural gas stocks (-2.9%), steel stocks (-2.8%), semiconductors (-2.7%), oil services (-2.5%), retailers (-2.5%), biotechs (-2.4%), commodities (-2.3%), oil stocks (-2.3%), natural resources (-2.3%), brokers (-2.2%), transportation (-2.1%), software (-2.0%) and disk drives (-1.9%). There’s more if you’d like…

Crude oil finished just above $61/barrel at $61.09. Natural gas is currently trading at $13.83/mBTU and gasoline at $1.59/gallon. The dollar fell another 0.4% to 89.13, and gold held fairly steady above $473/ounce.

BMB Note: There’s nothing good happening in this market right now, and it looks like it may be headed for a retest of the lows from a couple of weeks ago. Sit tight. No sense in trying to be a hero in this mess.

A pretty weak open, with major indices in the red and decliners leading advancers by about 2 to 1. Not very good news on durable goods orders. New home sales up, but note that housing inventory is building.

Only a couple of groups moving higher, those being the HMOs and gold & silver stocks, both bouncing after being hit, not to mention gold prices are up again today. Losers so far are steel stocks, housing, networking, disk drives and semiconductors.

Bonds have recovered a bit, pushing yields back down.

Oil prices down just slightly, but natural gas prices have just pulled back after the weekly release of natural gas inventories.

The dollar is down, and gold is up a bit.

Gary Kaltbaum says there are some things happening that he’s not very pleased with.

I would agree. The action of the past few days doesn’t exactly give me a warm, fuzzy feeling that we’re about to rocket to new highs.

Some big movers (some of them big blow-ups) on the day. I’m tellin’ ya, these earnings periods can get pretty whacky:

Big gainers:

• Intuitive Surgical (ISRG), up 18.21 or 25.3% to 90.20
• F5 Networks (FFIV), up 9.74 or 23.5% to 51.14

Blow-ups:

• Guitar Center (GTRC), down 10.19 or 16.7% to 50.96
• Garmin (GRMN), down 7.98 or 11.8% to 59.50
• Amazon (AMZN), down 6.42 or 13.9% to 39.75
• MGM Mirage (MGM), down 5.96 or 13.6% to 37.75
• PF Chang’s China Bistro (PFCB), down 5.93 or 11.8% to 44.38

Another rather unimpressive performance put in by the market that just can’t seem to decide what it wants to do. Stocks had some nice positive movement in the morning, but things deteriorated slowly throughout the day, leaving the major indices in the red, near their worst levels of the day.

The Dow Industrials fell 33 points (-0.3%) to 10345, the S&P 500 dropped 5 points (-0.4%) to 1191, and the Nasdaq lost 9 points (-0.4%) to 2100. The Russell 2000 dropped 4 points (-0.7%) to 638, the Dow Transports were down just over 1 point, but the Utilities plummeted 1.3%. Bonds had another tough day, sending yields up to 4.46% on the 5-year and 4.59% on the 10-year. Those rising rates certainly can’t be making the market real happy.

Market internals were weak for the second day in a row, with volume picking up from yesterday’s levels. Advances/declines ran about 1 to 2 on the NYSE and 2 to 3 on the Nasdaq, with up/down volume coming in at 1 to 2 on both exchanges. New highs/lows were 62/181 on the NYSE and 78/74 on the Nasdaq.

Most groups were higher early in the day, but things didn’t finish that way. In the end, only paper stocks (+1.9%), chemicals (+1.1%) and airlines (+0.9%) were able to hold significant gains. On the down side, HMOs (-2.7$%) had another lousy day, followed by gold & silver stocks (-2.6%, hurt by earnings reports from NEM and MDG), networking (-2.1%), hospitals (-1.8%), defense (-1.5%), housing (-1.5%), utilities (-1.3%), natural gas stocks (-1.2%), disk drives (-1.1%) and health care (-1.1%).

Crude oil prices also fell throughout the day, but the market wasn’t helped a bit. Oil fell $1.78 to $60.66/barrel, with natural gas down 34 cents to $14.04 and gasoline down about 7 cents to $1.58. The dollar bounced back some from yesterday’s drubbing, pushing the dollar index higher by 0.3% to 89.48. The spot price of gold drifted below $471/ounce.

BMB Note: The market continues to disappoint, as it seems unable to maintain any sort of upward momentum. Higher volume down days with lousy internals are not the way to follow through to the upside. Trends – either up or down – are hard to find in either the indices or the various groups. Sometimes the best thing to do is just sit back and wait for something good – or something bad – to happen. It’s difficult to make money by forcing the issue when the opportunities aren’t there.

A generally positive day thus far, with the major all slightly in the green and internals on the plus side. Leading the move up are the commodity stocks: oil services, steel, paper, chemicals, natural resources, oil and natural gas. Losing ground for another day are the HMOs.

Bonds are sliding again, pushing yields near multi-month highs. The 10-year currently sits at 4.57%.

Energy prices are slightly higher following the weekly inventory report, which showed a larger-than-expected increase in crude inventories but a slide in distillate supplies.

…and three or four steps back. The Nasdaq advance-decline line has been one ugly picture since the beginning of August. The line is constructed by subtracting the number of declining stocks from the number of advancing ones each day, and plotting the cumulative total. When more stocks are up than down on a day, the line goes up. If more stocks are down, the line goes down.

This is not the stuff bull runs are made of. We’ll be waiting for this line to make a serious change in direction before getting too excited about this market’s prospects.

Chart courtesy of StockCharts.com

Not a great day, but not a terrible one either – unless you were long bonds or the dollar, or short natural gas. The majors had to contend with rising energy prices and interest rates today, and spent most of the day below the flat line, but did come back off their worst levels late in the session.

The Dow Industrials lost 7 points (-0.1%) to 10378, the S&P 500 fell 3 points (-0.2%) to 1197, and the Nasdaq dropped 6 points (-0.3%) to 2109. The Russell 2000 lost 4 points (-0.6%) to 643. The Dow Transports were up 0.3% despite the rising energy prices, and the Utilities were unchanged despite the higher interest rates. Some of the biggest moves were in the bond market, where prices fell and yields rose: the 5-year to 4.38% and the 10-year to 4.51%.

Market internals leaned to the down side, and volume ticked up just slightly from yesterday. Advances/declines were 3 to 5 on the NYSE and 2 to 3 on the Nasdaq, with up/down volume about 4 to 7 on the NYSE and 8 to 11 on the Nasdaq. New highs/lows were 56/90 on the NYSE and 74/63 on the Nasdaq.

Another day of bounceback in the energy/commodity areas, with oil services up 3.0%, followed by natural resources (+2.0%), natural gas stocks (+2.0%), oil stocks (+1.9%), gold & silver stocks (+1.6%) and biotechs (+1.1%). Leading the way down were the HMOs (-4.3%, hurt by a couple of earnings reports), followed by airlines (-2.2%), retailers (-1.7%), computer hardware (-1.6%), paper stocks (-1.4%), hospitals (-1.3%), housing (-1.1%) and semiconductors (-1.0%).

Crude oil prices jumped more than $2 to $62.44/barrel, and natural gas climbed $1.34 to $14.35/mBTU. Unleaded gasoline was up 7 cents to $1.65/gallon. Positive economic news from Germany and the drop in US consumer sentiment readings helped to send the dollar down and gold higher today. The dollar index plunged 1.0% to 89.22 and the spot price of gold rose to above $472/ounce.

After the bell, Amazon beats estimates but guides lower. AMZN is getting hit for more than 7% in the after-market.

BMB Note: Today’s action puts a bit of a damper on the ‘mini-rally’ we’ve been seeing, not so much because of the price action, but more due to the backup in energy prices and interest rates. Those elements will always serve as market headwinds.

Although we’re seeing nice moves back in energy and commodity stocks, they certainly haven’t solidified enough to buy yet. On the short side, it looks like the recent bounce in the REITs and utilities could provide some opportunities soon, if the respective downtrends resume.

BMB has cut back from daily coverage of the shut-in energy statistics since they don’t change that much, but it’s important to be aware of just how much of the Gulf energy supply is still cut off – nearly 69% of oil and 56% of natural gas is still unavailable.

Here’s the latest from the MMS (GOM = Gulf of Mexico):

Today’s shut-in oil production is 1,033,621 BOPD. This shut-in oil production is equivalent to 68.91% of the daily oil production in the GOM, which is currently approximately 1.5 million BOPD.

Today’s shut-in gas production is 5.582 BCFPD. This shut-in gas production is equivalent to 55.82% of the daily gas production in the GOM, which is currently approximately 10 BCFPD.

The cumulative shut-in oil production for the period 8/26/05-10/25/05 is 68,550,886 bbls, which is equivalent to 12.521% of the yearly production of oil in the GOM (approximately 547.5 million barrels).

The cumulative shut-in gas production 8/26/05-10/25/05 is 348.093 BCF, which is equivalent to 9.537 % of the yearly production of gas in the GOM (approximately 3.65 TCF).

Ouch. A big turnaround in energy prices today, with crude oil up more than $2/barrel to $62.44. Natural gas is up – get this – $1.34 to $14.34/mBTU. Gasoline is up 7 cents to $1.65.