December traded the entire week mostly within last FridayΆs range. Relatively small changes reported in weekly on-call data. U.S. upland cotton under loan declined to 247,904 bales.
Cotton futures ticked on both sides of unchanged within the tight trading band of the previous session in benchmark December and eked out a small closing gain Friday.
December edged up nine points to close at 67.74 cents, in the upper half of its 70-point range from down 37 points at 67.28 to up 33 points at 67.98 cents. It traded the entire week mostly within last FridayΆs range.
Spot October closed up 18 points to 68.63 cents and March settled up 16 points to 68.39 cents. For the week, the market dipped 11 points in October, 38 points in December and 65 points in March.
Volume remained light, slowing to an electronically estimated 9,800 lots from a final 12,698 lots the previous session when spreads accounted for 2,825 lots or 22% and EFP 58 lots.
Unfixed on-call positions showed relatively small changes last week, according to call data reported by the Commodity Futures Trading Commission after the close Thursday.
Unpriced holdings in December declined by 732 lots to 13,960 on the mill side and rose by 90 lots to 22,686 lots on the producer side.
The net call difference increased by 822 lots to 8,726, which was 7.42% of DecemberΆs declining open interest, up from 6.56% a week earlier. The unpriced position of producers outweighed that of mills by a ratio of 1.6:1, up slightly from 1.5:1.
In the December through July contracts (no call holdings were reported in October), however, the report showed total unpriced mill positions exceeding those of producers by a ratio of 1.6:1.
Meanwhile, repayments on 54,607 running bales during the week ended July 14 reduced U.S. upland cotton under loan to 247,904 bales, according to the latest USDA figures.
Outstanding loans included 30,879 bales of Form A issued to individual growers and 217,025 bales issued to marketing cooperatives or loan servicing agents.
Futures open interest expanded 1,433 lots Thursday to 151,924, with DecemberΆs up 1,031 lots to 119,637 and MarchΆs up 332 lots to 25,208. Cert stocks declined 3,333 bales to 307,727. There were 2,698 newly certified bales and 6,031 bales decertified. No cotton awaited review.
World prices as measured by the Cotlook A Index held steady for the second straight day Friday morning at 83.05 cents. The premium to ThursdayΆs October futures price narrowed six points to 14.60 cents.
Forward A Index values for 2014-15 also were unchanged, holding at 75.55 cents to leave the discount to the 2013-14 index flat at 7.50 cents and widen the premium to ThursdayΆs December futures close by a point to 7.90 cents.
For the week, the old-crop index declined 85 points and the new-crop index dropped 70 points.
