The cotton market continued its selloff with another triple digit Friday loss. July, now in deliveries with no limits, fell 3,256 points or nearly 24%. That took the price to $1.03 76/100 a level not seen since the turn of the calendar. New crop futures were also 396 to 421 points in the red at the close. The July to December premium is now just 5.71 cents/lb. December cotton ended the week with a 20.24 cent loss with the first sub $1 close since 1/28/22.
CFTC’s weekly Commitment of Traders report showed managed money firms were closing longs through the week that ended 6/21. That reduced the group’s net long by 2,140 contracts to 61,110. Commercial cotton traders slashed their open interest by 14,988 contracts (7.9%) through the week, reducing their net short by 5.7k contracts to 98.9k. That was their weakest net short since August of 2020.
FAS data showed 16,207 RBs of cotton was sold for export during the week that ended 6/16. That was another MY low and was down 80% from the same week last year. New crop cotton bookings were up 86% from the same week last year with 277k RBs added to the forward book. The total forward commitments were 4.02m RBs as of 6/16, a 75% increase yr/yr. As for old crop exports, the weekly data showed 371,867 RBs took the season’s total to 11.146m RBs. That is down 17% but compares to the 44% lag yr/yr in January.
The Cotlook A index fell another 6 cents on 6/23 to 150.50 cents. USDA lowered the Adjusted World Price for cotton by 4.52 cents to 135.95 c/lb.
Jul 22 Cotton closed at 103.76, down 3256 points,
Dec 22 Cotton closed at 98.05, down 396 points,
Mar 23 Cotton closed at 93.52, down 421 points