Mills entered the week with still 4.48 million bales of unfixed on-call positions in current-crop contracts. U.S. upland outstanding loans declined to 1.383 million running bales.
Cotton futures posted triple-digit current-crop closing gains Friday to finish ahead for the fourth consecutive week.
Spot May gained 118 points to close at 93.74 cents, right at the high of its 155-point range from down 31 points at 92.25 cents to up 124 points at 93.80 cents. It closed higher for the second straight day, the first time it has finished twice in the same direction in six sessions.
July closed up 124 points to 93.61 cents and December settled up 48 points to 79.93 cents. For the week, May gained 43 points and July rose 91 points, while December dipped 32 points.
Volume increased to an estimated 19,300 lots from 17,409 lots the previous session when spreads totaled 5,485 lots or 32%, block trades 180 lots, EFP 110 lots and EFS two lots. Options volume totaled 4,288 calls and 3,424 puts.
On-call mill fixations have offered support on pullbacks this week. Unfixed mill positions fell by 1,116 lots in May and 181 lots in July last week, according to the latest on-call data from the Commodity Futures Trading Commission.
This left mills entering this week with unfixed positions of 16,873 lots in May and 27,936 lots in July. Combined, their unpriced May-July holdings totaled 44,809 lots or 4.48 million bales. These must be priced prior to first notice days of April 24 for May and June 24 for July.
Producers reduced their small remaining unpriced current-crop holdings by a combined 123 lots to 3,812 lots. The ratio of the unfixed May-July mill position to that of producers stood at 11.75:1, which was 28.3% of the expanded open interest.
Both mills and producers increased their call positions in December. Mills raised theirs by 1,367 lots to 9,709 and producers hiked theirs by 1,766 lots to 17,290.
Meanwhile, U.S. outstanding upland loans fell 94,189 running bales to 1.383 million during the week ended March 24, USDA reported. Upland entries totaled 3,188 bales and repayments were made on 97,377 bales.
The loans outstanding included 102,285 bales of Form A issued to individual growers and 1,280,993 bales of Form G issued to marketing cooperatives or loan servicing agents.
Futures open interest dipped 297 lots Thursday to 183,865, with MayΆs down 1,270 lots to 99,136, JulyΆs up 666 lots to 41,735 and DecemberΆs up 293 lots to 39,267.
Even with some heavy trading, which jumped to the largest one-day turnover on Wednesday since mid-June last year, overall open interest showed little change from a week ago, edging up 92 lots.
But position-rolling appeared evident in that MayΆs OI fell 7,993 lots, JulyΆs grew 5,649 lots and DecemberΆs gained 1,693 lots. The biggest one-day board change was a loss of 3,268 lots on MondayΆs selloff. Index funds were to begin rolling from the front delivery on Friday.
Certificated stocks were unchanged for the day at 254,283 bales and were down 721 bales from a week ago.
World values as measured by the Cotlook A Index gained 90 points Friday morning to 97.30 cents. The index premium to ThursdayΆs May futures settlement was flat at 4.74 cents. For the week, the index eked out a five-point gain.
