Cotton market information shuts down
Cotton market information shuts down

Cotton market information shuts down

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Το περιεχόμενο του άρθρου δεν είναι διαθέσιμο στη γλώσσα που έχετε επιλέξει και ως εκ τούτου το εμφανίζουμε στην αυθεντική του εκδοχή. Μπορείτε να χρησιμοποιήσετε την υπηρεσία Google Translate για να το μεταφράσετε.
Cotton Spin: The government shutdown has made it difficult to monitor and evaluate the cotton market in real time.

John Robinson, Extension economist, cotton marketing, Texas AgriLife Extension 

As I write this, the federal government is wrapping up two weeks of interrupted spending. By the time you read this, that could be closer to three weeks. This isn’t the first time this has happened. Federal spending shutdowns in 2013, 2018 and now 2025 all resulted in missing World Agricultural Supply and Demand Estimates reports.

The current shutdown has impacted multiple cotton market information flows. First, most USDA operations have ceased, including:

  • the routine crop progress and production reports of the National Agricultural Statistics Service

  • the routine export sales and shipment information from the Foreign Agriculture Service

  • the monthly supply and demand estimates of the World Agricultural Outlook Board (i.e., the WASDE)

  • the Risk Management Agency website

Second, the Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CFTC) has ceased publishing Commitment of Traders reports as well as the Cotton-on-Call data. The former are useful in documenting the weekly position of speculators in Intercontinental Exchange cotton futures. The latter is useful as an index of demand for futures buying and selling by hedgers.  

Without such public information, inside market players, such as large merchants and large speculators, will be the most informed and potentially operate with more advantage than growers. Futures markets are only efficient mechanisms for signaling prices and transferring risk to the extent that all traders are similarly informed.

The main sources of market information still available are the data and reports published by the Intercontinental Exchange. This includes futures prices, daily settlements, trade volume, open interest and certified stocks data. The weekly patterns of daily settlements and open interest provide one substitute for the unavailable CFTC data. For example, day-to-day increases in futures price settlements coupled with rising or falling open interest suggest either new speculative buying or short covering, respectively. 

Similarly, day-to-day decreases in futures price settlements combined with rising or falling open interest imply either new speculative selling or long liquidation, respectively. So far in October we have seen several weeks of what appears to be new speculative selling. It’s nice to be able to confirm those observations with Commitment of Traders data.

For additional thoughts on these and other cotton marketing topics, please visit my weekly online newsletter at cottonmarketing.tamu.edu


Πηγή: farmprogress.com

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