For the week ending Friday, January 27, ICE cotton futures gyrated in a sideways pattern around the recently established mid-80s level (see chart above courtesy of Barchart.com).  The nearby Mar’23 contract settled for the week at 86.89 cents per pound, while the new crop Dec’23 settled at 85.58 cents.  Chinese cotton prices were off celebrating the Lunar New Year, and the A-Index were mixed/flat across the week.

Cotton-specific influences this week included reports of inactive (Delta), moderate (Southeast) to active (Texas) spot physical trading, along with mostly moderate demand. The pace of weekly U.S. export sales remained strong for the second week in a row, while actual export shipments remained below the needed weekly average (albeit seasonally in the ballpark).

ICE cotton futures open interest had a modest uptrend this week, while price settlements were mostly flat/mixed.  The onset of regularly scheduled fund rolling was reflected in high volume trading. The regular Tuesday snapshot of speculative positioning (through January 24) was bullish looking with 6,259 more hedge fund longs coupled with 4,780 fewer hedge fund shorts, week over week.  The index fund net long position shrank 1,710 contracts compared to the previous week.

In contrast to ICE cotton, CBOT corn and soybean futures had more of an uptrend across the week, as did KC wheat futures. The U.S. dollar index showed a gyrated sideways patterns that might appear as the bottoming out of a four month slide.

For more details and data on Old Crop and New Crop fundamentals, plus other near term influences, follow these links (or the drop-down menus above) to those sub-pages.