The cotton market sloughed off poor weekly sales to trade higher. Within that data, weekly shipments were higher than last week. There were some small cancellations by China and Mexico. Also adding to the upside move Thursday was the fact that the market remains in a steep oversold state, thus losing downside momentum encouraged short-sold speculators to cover.
Friday, July cotton options expire and a key strike level to watch are the 67.00-cent levels. Open Interest will definitely have an effect as certain expiring puts and calls will potentially offset July futures hedges. Of course, July futures will soon enter its delivery, meaning the long trading journey from last fall’s harvest to early summer will be over for those producers with on-call positions.
December cotton will enter Friday’s trade about 1.00 cent higher for the week, although that could obviously change by week’s end. Nonetheless, it will be the first time in many weeks that the market has entered into a Friday session off a contract low. The 100-day trend remain very bearish.
For Thursday, July cotton closed at 66.83 cents, up 0.26 cent, December finished at 66.43 cents, up 0.55 cent and March closed at 67.00 cents, 0.42 cent higher. Estimated volume was 53,000 contracts.
