Across the week ending Friday, June 13, ICE cotton futures gradually descended in bumpy touch-and-go pattern within the longstanding and narrow trading range (see chart above courtesy of Barchart.com).  New crop Dec’25 settled Friday at 67.84 cents per pound, while “Red Dec” 2026 settled at 68.98.   Chinese cotton prices were flat-to-higher this week, while the A-Index of world cotton prices was flatter.

Across the week ending June 13, CBOT corn and soybean futures,, as well as KC wheat futures declined into a flat pattern, although soybeans shot straight up on Friday like a rocket. ICE WTI crude oil futures made a gradual take-off that rose more at week’s end. The U.S. dollar index traded flat, then trended down to three-year lows, then had a “flight to safety” bounce.  It remains uncertain how financial markets will react as they approach the end of the 90 day hiatus on U.S. tariffs on its trading partners.   Other macro influences (i.e., GDP, inflation, and interest rate policy) remained mixed in their expectation and implication.

Cotton-focused market influences this week included bullish supply/demand adjustments to both the old crop and the new crop balance sheets.  The week saw continued weekly reports of very light to moderate regional demand for U.S. cotton.  There were continued weak U.S. export net sales for the week ending June 5, although this may be more of a function of reported light supplies.  Having said that, weekly net sales for the next marketing year were disappointingly low as well.  The pace of 2024/25 export shipments continued above the weekly average level needed to reach USDA’s target level of exports (11.5 million bales). All of the projected U.S. old crop production has been ginned and classed since about April.  New crop influences included continued rainy weather over the the U.S. Cotton Belt, while the early arriving Indian monsoon has been stalled.

For the week ending Thursday, June 5, the day-to-day shifts in ICE cotton open interest were mixed higher and lower. The regular weekly (Tuesday, June 10) snapshot snapshot of speculative open interest showed a mixed bag with more short short positioning in the form of 391 fewer (liquidated) hedge fund long positions reinforcing 5,608 additional hedge fund short positions, week over week.  However, this was partially countered by a 2,223 contract expansion of of the index trader net long position, week over week.

The dynamics of ICE cotton futures may also represent a wet blanket on the market.  It remains true that unfixed call sales (by mills) are at an historically low level, perhaps reflecting the cautionary buying on the demand side. In terms of ratios, unfixed call purchases (by suppliers) outweigh unfixed call sales by almost two-fold across all contracts, as of June 6.

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.