The week ending Friday, September 12 saw ICE cotton futures gradually climb before leveling out in a narrow trading range (see chart above courtesy of Barchart.com). Dec’25 ICE cotton settled Friday at 66.83 cents per pound, while the Dec’26 contract settled at 69.44 cents. Chinese cotton prices steadily decreased this week, while the A-Index of world cotton prices was mixed.
CBOT corn and soybeans, and KC wheat all stepped higher early in the week and then gyrated sideways through the pre-WASDE report period. WTI crude oil futures rose and peaked Wednesday on geopolitical risk before sliding lower. The U.S. dollar index traded in a sideways pattern until Thursday’s influences resulted in sharp up-down intraday volatility. Other macro influences (i.e., GDP, inflation, and interest rate policy) remained mixed in their expectation and implication for slow economic growth.
Cotton-focused market influences for the week ending September 12 included updated supply and demand forecasts from USDA with price neutral implications. The week saw continued weekly reports of very light to moderate regional demand for U.S. cotton, along with light supplies. Weekly net sales for the 2025/26 marketing year slipped to 130,200 bales of all cotton for the week ending September 4. This modest level is not an encouraging indicator of demand.
Recent agronomic influences included widely scattered rainfall over parts of Texas, Kansas, the Delta, and the Southeast. On the other side of the world, the precocious Indian monsoon continues strong during what should be the withdrawal phase (which is forecasted to begin September 15 in the northwes, but also forecast to be 109% of India’s 50 year average September rainfall). It remains to be seen whether recent floods in India and (especially) Pakistan are a net benefit or detriment to summer-sown crops like cotton.
Through Thursday, September 11, the day-to-day shifts in ICE cotton open interest were flat/mixed, while daily price settlements rose slightly across the week. The regular weekly (Tuesday, September 9) snapshot of speculative open interest reflected a continuation of the previous week’s short positioning with 2,469 additional hedge fund shorts, week over week, reinforced by 456 fewer hedge fund longs as well a 430 position shrinkage in the index trader net long position.
The dynamics of ICE cotton futures may also represent a wet blanket on the market. It remains true that unfixed call sales (by mills) are at an historically low level, perhaps reflecting the cautionary buying on the demand side. In terms of ratios, unfixed call purchases (by suppliers) outweigh unfixed call sales by over two-fold across all contracts, as of September 5. For the Dec’25 contract alone, there were over three unfixed call purchases for every unfixed call sale.
For more details and data on Old Crop and New Crop fundamentals, plus other near term influences, follow these links (or the drop-down menus above) to those sub-pages.
Source: TAMU