Mills had 21,397 on-call lots open in March as of Jan. 10. ChinaΆs imports leaped in December. U.S. upland loans outstanding edged up to 2.25 million bales.
Cotton futures finished on another new high close for the move Friday and extended a winning streak to five sessions in a row ahead of a three-day weekend.
Spot March closed up 61 points to 86.80 cents, above ThursdayΆs intraday high and again its highest settlement since Oct. 4. It settled in the upper third of the dayΆs 125-point range from down 30 points at 85.89 cents to up 95 points at 87.14 cents.
May gained 65 points to 87.05 cents, July rose 49 points to 86.36 cents and December added 21 points to 79.88 cents after touching an intraday high of 80 cents.
For the week, the market gained 421 points in March, 431 points in May, 389 points in July and 243 points in December.
The cotton market will be closed Monday in observance of civil rights leader Martin Luther King Jr. Day.
Volume slowed to an estimated 26,800 lots from 32,459 lots the previous session when spreads accounted for 10,886 lots and EFP for 128 lots. Options volume totaled 15,810 calls and 4,904 puts.
Unfixed on-call positions based in March fell 238 lots to 21,397 on the mill side and 315 lots to 6,318 lots on the producer side last week, according to the latest Commodity Futures Trading Commission data.
The net call difference thus dipped 77 lots to 15,079, which represented 13.8% of the open interest. The ratio of unfixed mill positions to that of producers remained sizable at 3:39:1. This was viewed as supportive as March moves toward maturity.
For all the 2013-14 marketing year deliveries, the mills priced 1,508 lots and producers fixed 346 lots, reducing the unfixed positions to 50,845 and 9,401 lots, respectively.
This boosted the net call difference by 1,854 lots to 41,444, which was 25.4% of the open interest, and left mills with 5.41 lots to price in the March, May and July contracts for every one by producers.
In the new-crop December contract, producers added 1,060 lots to boost their open position there to 10,245 lots and mills added 331 lots to hike theirs to 3,381 lots.
Confirmation earlier this week that ChinaΆs cotton imports rose 14.4% in December from a year ago to 609,000 metric tons (nearly 2.8 million bales) may have contributed to the bullish environment. Imports were up from 173,122 tons (795,100 bales) in November.
Heavy imports typically are seen in December to meet quota deadlines, analysts said. Imports for the first five months of the marketing year totaled about 1.4 million tons (6.43 million bales) and for calendar 2013 fell 19.2% to 4.15 million tons (19.06 million bales).
The marketing year imports leave about 4.57 million bales required to meet the USDA forecast of 11 million bales, which is down 46% from 2012-13. Cotton Outlook has estimated ChinaΆs imports for 2013-14 at 2.5 million tons or 11.483 million bales.
On the U.S. crop scene, outstanding upland loans edged up 1,821 bales during the week ended Tuesday on entries of 195,045 bales and repayments on 193,224 bales.
Upland loans outstanding of 2.246 million bales included 285,439 bales of Form A issued to individual growers and 1.989 million bales of Form G issued to marketing cooperatives or loan servicing agents.
Futures open interest expanded 4,111 lots Thursday to 181,203, with MarchΆs up 1,924 lots to 109,102 and MayΆs up 1,005 lots to 36,143. Cert stocks grew 1,848 bales to 50,979 on 2,552 newly certified bales and 704 decertified bales.
World values as measured by the Cotlook A Index jumped 215 points Friday morning to 92.60 cents, up 450 points from a week ago. The premium to ThursdayΆs March futures settlement widened 75 points to 6.41 cents.
