March finished on a new high close. Unfixed March on-call positions edged up 287 lots on the mill side and declined 303 lots on the producer side last week.
Cotton futures finished with slight gains in current-crop deliveries and modest losses in new-crop contracts Friday.
Spot March edged up 16 points to settle at 83.22 cents, a new high close for the move and near the high of its 95-point range from down 59 points at 82.47 to up 36 points at 83.42 cents, the highest intraday print since Oct. 23.
The May contract eked out a 10-point gain to 82.90 cents, July edged up 20 points to 82.27 cents and December 2014 fell 20 points to 76.77 cents. For the week, the market gained 281 points in March, 244 points in May, 174 points in July and 13 points in December.
Volume slipped to an estimated 18,400 lots from 21,327 lots the previous session when spreads accounted for 5,198 lots or 24% and EFP for seven lots. Options volume totaled 5,489 calls and 2,794 puts.
Unfixed on-call positions in March edged up 287 lots to 22,300 on the mill side last week and declined 303 lots to 9,454 on the producer side, according to the latest Commodity Futures Trading Commission call data.
Thus the net call difference widened 590 lots to 12,846, which was 11.53% of the March open interest. Mills had 2.36 March contracts to price for every one by producers.
In the current-crop contracts from March through July, unfixed mill sales rose by 1,966 lots to 45,115, while the producer position fell 188 lots to 12,301.
This widened the net call difference in the remaining 2013-14 marketing year contracts by 2,154 lots to 32,814. The difference was 21.8% of the rising March-July open interest, and the unfixed mill positions outweighed those of producers by a ratio of 3.67:1.
On the competitive-pricing scene, the average of the five lowest-priced world growths for the Far East gained 143 points to 86.16 cents during the week ended Thursday, according to USDA, and the low U.S. quote landed there rose 170 points to 90.15 cents.
The U.S. premium thus widened 27 points to 3.99 cents. The adjusted world price for the week ahead is 65.92 cents, USDA announced, up from 64.49 cents this past week. The fine count adjustment is 1.28 cents, up from 1.19 cents.
Futures open interest grew 1,683 lots Thursday to 162,633, with MarchΆs up 300 lots to 108,760 and MayΆs up 843 lots to 30,254. The board total rose by 5,022 lots from a week earlier.
Certificated stocks declined 1,253 bales to 58,093, down from 94,361 bales a week ago. There were 1,320 bales decertified, 67 newly certified bales and 3,391 bales awaiting review.
World values as measured by the Cotlook A Index gained 40 points Friday morning to 88.80 cents. The index premium to ThursdayΆs March futures settlement narrowed 17 points to 5.74 cents. For the week, the index advanced 350 points.
