The market ticked down in the prompt under a huge weight of fundamental pressure, with a decline in demand due to mild weather and gas prices also ticked down pushing power with it. However, these falls only saw drops of £3 in Q1 06. The main reason for this is that there are few sellers, and even fewer players wishing to sell their length and go short. the therefore expected drop will be slow, and the prompt will have to fall with a death by a thousand knives approach.

Against some odds, the backend of the curve ticked up, mainly because sellers have seen that the prompt is not falling much beyond £70 and so at £64 Winter 06 looks cheap. In reality the fundamentals also point to greater gas supplies and if Winters are mild next year this looks very expensive. Perhaps a dip below £60 would warrant more customer buying but one suspects that it will not return to sub £60 until half way through next Summer.