The week ending Friday, March 25 saw the most active May’22 ICE cotton contract set new highs with three upward bursts along a steady uptrend (see chart above courtesy of Barchart.com).  The May contract settled Friday at 135.90 cents per pound, limit up on the day.  I frankly lost count of how many limit or near-limit moves occurred in the last seven days.   Chinese and world cotton prices were higher as well.

The European conflict and indicators of economic slowing both continued to influence financial markets, although ICE futures acted more like a free agent.  U.S. cotton export sales were decent.   New crop dynamics are definitely under the influence of the drought/weather market.

ICE cotton futures open interest rose across the week, which along with the higher settlements suggests new speculative buying.  Indeed, the regular Tuesday snapshot (through March 22) reflected more long positioning with  4,648 more hedge fund longs, week over week, on top of 667 more index fund longs.  There were only 85 addtional hedge fund shorts, week over week.  In contrast to old crop cotton futures on the ICE, U.S. grain and oilseed futures had a flatter pattern this week. The U.S. dollar index trended higher this 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.