For the week ending Friday, April 28, ICE cotton futures peaked early, slid almost four cents, recovered half of that, gyrated sideways, and then recovered another 130 points (see chart above courtesy of Barchart.com). The most active Jul’23 contract settled Friday up 40 points at 80.80 cents per pound, while the new crop Dec’23 settled at 81.10 cents.  The week saw downtrends in CBOT corn and soybean futures as well as lower KC wheat futures.  Chinese cotton prices were mixed-to-higher across the week while the A-Index of world prices declined.

Cotton-specific influences this week included rain over Texas.  U.S. export sales recovered with actual export shipments remaining strong.   USDA’s weekly summary of the U.S. regional markets continued to reflect mixed spot physical trading activity and demand across the various U.S. regions.

ICE cotton futures open interest rose across the week.   The regular Tuesday snapshot of speculative positioning (through April 25) showed the hedge fund net long position contract with 4,531 fewer (liquidated) longs and 5,410 more new shorts, week over week.  The index fund net long position declined a mere 45 contracts.

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.