Classing of 103,277 bales at Corpus Christi this week boosted the seasonΆs total to 281,298 bales, up from 82,756 bales a year ago. Tenderable cotton totaled 81.8% for the week and 78.5% for the season.
Cotton futures rallied to the dayΆs high in benchmark December in the late going and finished about flat Friday ahead of a long holiday weekend.
December settled off a tick at 66.57 cents, just off the high of its 90-point range from down 82 points at 65.76 to up eight points at 66.66 cents. It gained 39 points for the week and 370 points or 5.9% for the month.
Nearby October closed up 46 points to 67.60 cents and March slipped 17 points to settle at 67.01 cents. The market will be closed Monday in observance of Labor Day.
Volume slipped to an estimated 18,300 lots from a final 19,210 lots the previous session when spreads accounted for 6,739 lots or 35% and EFP 603 lots. Options volume totaled 2,671 calls and 918 puts.
Classing increased to 103,277 bales during the week ended Thursday from 84,601 bales the previous week at the USDA facility at Corpus Christi.
The office has graded 281,298 bales for the season, up from 82,756 bales a year ago. Cotton tenderable on futures contracts climbed to 81.8% for the week and 78.5% for the season, compared with 80.1% and 76.4% the prior week, respectively, and 43.1% and 51.6% a year ago.
Cotton harvesting neared completion in the South Texas district and the Rio Grande Valley. Stalks were shredded or plowed under. The stalk destruction deadline in the valley is Sept. 1. This is regarded as vital to disrupt the life cycle of boll weevils and prevent overwintering.
Defoliants were applied and some fields harvested in the Blackland Prairies. The Corpus Christi office received the first classing samples from that area.
Meanwhile, unfixed on-call positions based in December increased by 115 lots to 11,560 on the mill side last week and declined by 391 lots to 21,445 on the producer side, according to the latest call data from the Commodity Futures Trading Commission.
The net call difference narrowed 506 lots to 9,885, which was 8.9% of the December open interest, against 9.09% a week earlier. The ratio by which the unfixed position of producers outweighed that of mills eased to 1.86:1 from 1.91:1.
In the March, May and July 2015 contracts, mills added 792 lots to raise their unpriced call holdings there to 29,986 lots and producers added 103 lots to nudge their unfixed position to 3,034 lots.
Separately, exemplifying depleted old-crop inventories, outstanding U.S. 2013-14 upland loans declined 9,497 running bales during the week ended Monday to only 48,267 bales.
Old-crop cotton under loan included 3,672 bales of Form A issued to individual growers and 44,495 bales of Form G issued to loan servicing agents, USDA figures showed.
Upland loans outstanding on new-crop cotton rose by 6,609 bales to 14,238 bales. Entries totaled 13,806 bales and repayments were made on 7,197 bales.
Futures open interest dipped 169 lots Thursday to 175,408, with DecemberΆs down 1,250 lots to 111,571 and MarchΆs up 777 lots to 48,239. Cert stocks declined 161 bales to 71,071.
World values as measured by the Cotlook A Index fell 75 points Friday morning to 75.30 cents, widening the premium to ThursdayΆs December futures settlement by 13 points to 8.72 cents
