The week ending Friday, March 4 saw the most active May’22 ICE cotton contract gyrate higher, sideways, and finally lower by week’s end (see chart above courtesy of Barchart.com).  The May contract settled Friday at 116.42 cents per pound, down 338 points on the day. Chinese and world cotton prices were mixed over the week.

Outside global concerns (Ukraine and Russia) continued to weigh on many financial markets, although U.S. export sales substantially strengthened in the second half of February. Unlike wheat and oil, the disruption of Black Sea trading flows has little direct implication for cotton trade, except perhaps blocking inbound finished textile products.

Among other market influences, mill fixation buying may be offsetting the effect of speculative liquidation on cotton futures prices.  ICE cotton futures open interest was mixed across the week.  The regular Tuesday snapshot (through March 1) showed 946 fewer hedge fund longs, week over week, but this was matched against 608 more index fund longs.  There were also 1,750 fewer hedge fund shorts, week over week, so it is a mixed picture of speculative influences.  Other commodity futures saw mostly gains on the week (CBOT corn, KC wheat, WTI crude oil) while CBOT soybeans gyrated sideways. The U.S. dollar index also trended higher across the week.

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.