After getting beat down every day, the cotton market did manage a positive close Friday, albeit a small positive close. From last Friday to this Friday, the cotton market suffered an extraordinary loss encompassing some 13.00 cents or about a 12% decline.
Of course, the big, bearish driver of cotton this week, and the rest of the financial and commodities markets, was the emergence of the omicron variant. Adding to some of Friday’s general negativity was the poor jobs number report for November. Expectations called for 550,000 jobs created but the Labor Department reported on 210,000 were produced.
Friday afternoon the CFTC will issue its weekly commitment of traders report. Last week data indicated the managed-money funds were net long nearly 90,000 contacts. It will be interesting to see how the initial downdraft from omicron downdraft affected their ranks.
On Monday, USDA will update the 2021 harvest progress. Thus far, the crop stands at 85% gathered, which was slightly lower than the five-year average.
For the week, March finished down 7.58 cents on the week, down 2.21 cents on the month, but still up 28.93 cents on the year,
Friday, December settled at 109.30 cents, up 0.40 cent, March ended at 104.20 cents, up 0.50 cent and December 2022 ended at 87.75 cents, 1.17 cents higher; estimated volume was 22,145 contracts.
Source: Agfax