MERGER BATTLES, NAT GAS, AND MORE!

While markets sold off Friday we had mlps showing strength into the weekend. So now the new week begins and charts are at tenious places that need careful watching. The dow chart is trying to hold above the bottom of the range and has actually been showing some signs of a bottom. But each day has been a battle and add to that the end of month,quarter, and half year pressures and you have the mix for nothing but confusion.

And while the dow chart has been doing one thing the mlp chart has been doing something else in the last few days.
350 is holding and the last few days we have seen early day selloffs followed by closes near the highs of the day. All of this is coming as crude continues to fall and looking to break decisively below 90 dollars. Nat gas meanwhile has been holding its own as it has come back down to its recent bottom and we may see an attempt to rally off that today. Nat gas is flat at the moment.
So lets mix all of this together and add to that the Greek mess as they teter on the edge of default and the result is stock futures which are sitting at...unchanged!!!!

The NY Times is attempting to do a business story about the viability of shale and natural gas. The result is nat gas stocks which are mixed pre open. Not sure what their point is. There really isn't anything new here and the piece fails to address the fact that this administration is hostile to energy developement unless it comes from a windmill. Judging by some of the pre market action (or non action) in nat gas and nat gas stocks..there isn't much that we don't already know.

The battle for Southern Union (SUG) heats up with Energy Transfer (ETE) making moves to block Williams (WPZ) from succeeding with their higher bid. Williams as it turns out bid 30 bucks for Southern Union earlier in the year. All participants will be active today. Genesis (GEL) is buying assets from Florida Marine Transporters. No news link available yet. Genesis says this will add to cash flow going foward.

Stock futures are flat for the most part as rates on the far end of the curve tick up while the 10 year is holding at 2.86%. The dollar is a little higher and euro markets are now a little lower. Crude is barely holding 90 bucks and metals are a little lower.

One mlp to keep an eye on in my view is Nustar (NS) as it has been behaving better lately.
After hitting 58 in the pullback to 350 it seems to be wanting to hold up in here as it closed Friday near 64. Not sure if anything is going on here but since it has been been an underperformer for much of the mlp rally, perhaps it is sending us some sort of a signal. No guarantees folks but lets watch to see if it can get above the moving averages.