For the week ending Friday, October 21, ICE cotton futures continued their recent downward slide (see chart above courtesy of Barchart.com). This is part of a forty cent decline since late August, the second major price slump in five months.   The Dec’22 settled on Friday at 79.13 cents per pound, up 173 points on the day after reaching an intraday low of 75.80 cents.  The Dec’23 contract settled Friday at 74.57 cents per pound, and is at an increasing disadvantage to competing new crop feedgrain and wheat prices.   Chinese cotton prices and the A-Index were mixed-to-lower this week.

Cotton-specific influences this week included a continuation of very light-to-moderate demand in inactive/slow physical trading. Weekly export sales continued weak, with cancellations, while actual export shipments were sub-par level.  U.S. boll opening and harvest both progressed ahead of  the historical pace, despite rains over several cotton producing states, including Texas.

The pattern of ICE cotton futures open interest was mixed this week, while price settlements were lower.  The regular Tuesday snapshot of speculative positioning (through October 18) explains some of the price weakness as long liquidation (3,513 fewer hedge fund longs and 1,182 fewer index fund longs, week over week).  This was reinforced by 1,403 new hedge fund shorts, week over week.

CBOT new crop corn and soybean futures, along with KC hard red winter wheat futures, had a sideways/mixed pattern of price settlements. The U.S. dollar index gyrated in a sideways pattern across the week, apparently following the direction of variable U.S. bond yields.

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.