Futures End Down after Wild Session

NYMEX futures struggled to put together consecutive down days, and similar to the Bruins last night, it was a little tense right up to the end.  Futures opened down over 3 cents in both Pits and fell to as much as over five cents down before clawing all the way back, and actually trading positive briefly with about 40 minutes left in the day.  The days fall can be attributed to yesterdays news of Standard & Poors issuing a negative long term credit rating for the United States.  Highlighting that report was concern over the future of Commodity pricing and its effect on consumers.  Yet many are pointing to signals within the economy that could lead one to believe that we are well into a recovery.  Lets face it, last weeks DOE numbers were an aboration of refinery turns.  And as the pits turned stronger today, it centered around reports that gasoline demand jumped over 3% last week.  But that report is by spendingpulse.  Spendingpulse is a yardstick for usage of credit card customers.  Americans generally charge gasoline as a last resort to cash or debit. Thus the sell off continued.  At the close, front month Crude rose $1.03 on the expiry to $108.15. RBOB fel .0197 to $3.2331 and HEAT fell .0243 to $3.1585.  Keep in mind, we have not seen three consecutive down days since early FEB, and previously in early DEC.