Cotton Pulls off Lows, Still Closes with Losses
Cotton futures rounded out the week with Friday losses of 7 to 19 points, with bearish USDA data and outside market factors. December managed to close with a gain of 81 points over the course of the week. The outside markets were pressuring the market, with crude oil down $1.85/barrel and the US dollar index back up 460 points on the day.
This morning’s Crop Production report from NASS showed US cotton production down just 10,000 bales to 14.19 million bales. The export projection was also down 200,000 bales to 11.3 million bales, which helped to take the ending stocks projection 200,000 bales higher to 4.3 million. For the world S&D table, the ending stocks total was down 580,000 bales at 75.75 million bales, mainly on a smaller carryover from the 2023/24 crop year.
The bi-monthly Cotton Ginnings report showed 2.402 million RB ginned in the last 2 weeks of October. As of November 1, US gins had ginned 4.696 million RB of cotton, a 5-year high for the date.
Commitment of Traders data from CFTC shows specs in cotton futures and options at a net short of 10,917 contracts as of 11/5, a 268 contract addition on the week.
The Seam reported 6,272 bales of online sales on November 7 at an average price of 69.11 cents/lb. ICE cotton stocks were unchanged on Thursday, leaving 174 bales of certified stocks. The Cotlook A Index was down 20 points on 11/7 at 82.00 cents/lb. The USDA Adjusted World Price (AWP) was down another 58 points this week to 57.96 cents/lb in Thursday afternoon’s report.
Mar 25 Cotton closed at 73.25, down 18 points,
May 25 Cotton closed at 74.59, down 19 points,
Jul 25 Cotton closed at 75.76, down 14 points
On the date of publication, Austin Schroeder did not have (either directly or indirectly) positions in any of the securities mentioned in this article. All information and data in this article is solely for informational purposes. For more information please view the Barchart Disclosure Policy here.