For the week ending Thursday, December 12, the nearby Mar’25 ICE cotton futures did a little bit of everything: gyrated sideways, trended lower, stepped higher, and leveled off (see chart above courtesy of Barchart.com). Mar’25 ICE cotton settled Friday at 70.09 cents per pound, while new crop Dec’25 settled at 71.27 cents. Chinese cotton prices followed a flat/mixed day-to-day pattern across the week, while A-Index of world cotton prices eroded gradually.
In other markets, nearby CBOT corn and KC wheat futures stair-stepped higher and then lower, while CBOT soybean futures had a flat weekly pattern. U.S. dollar index rose across the week. Other macro influences (i.e., GDP, inflation, and interest rate policy) were typically mixed in their implication.
Cotton-specific influences this week included neutral supply/demand adjustments from USDA, as well as so-so weekly U.S. export sales. The pace of 2024/25 export shipments remained below the needed weekly average pace to reach USDA’s target level of exports, though this is not unusual for this supply-dominated time of the year.
For the week ending December 11, the day-to-day levels in open interest in ICE cotton modestly increased. As of Tuesday, December 3 (released Friday, December 6) the weekly snapshot of speculative positioning showed more bullish adjustments 1,505 fewer (covered) hedge fund shorts and a 4,649 expansion in the index fund net long position. This was further reinforced by 672 additional hedge fund longs, week over week.
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