The week holiday-shortened week ending Friday, June 3 saw the nearby Jul’22 ICE cotton follow a gyrating sideways pattern (see chart above courtesy of Barchart.com). Jul’22 and Dec’22 cotton on the ICE settled Friday at 138.18 and 117.90 cents per pound, respectively. Further out Dec’23 cotton settled at 93.76 cents per pound. Chinese cotton prices continued flat this week and below the A-index and ICE futures.
Cotton-specific influences this week included improved short-term moisture in Texas, generally weak demand, yet stronger U.S. cotton export sales and strong export shipments. U.S. cotton planting progress was a little ahead of par with recent history. And on the other side of the world, the southwest monsoon arrived in India a couple of days early with an updated forecast of normal rain accumulations.
ICE cotton futures open interest was flat across the week. The regular Tuesday snapshot (through May 31) showed bearish, but relatively minor, week-over-week adjustments with 884 fewer hedge fund longs, 416 more hedge fund shorts, and 695 fewer index fund longs.
CBOT nearby corn futures were flat-to-lower, while soybeans were more flat and KC wheat futures were flat-to-higher. The U.S. dollar index had a gyrating sideways pattern.
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.