ICE cotton futures started the week ending Friday, September 23 in a fairly steep down-trend to the weekly lows by late Tuesday.  Prices then hiked up, crossed, and rolled back down the hill over the latter part of the week (see chart above courtesy of Barchart.com). Dec’22 settled down the four cent limit on Friday at 92.54 cents per pound, while the Dec’23 settled at 77.24 cents per pound.  This puts the latter at an increasing disadvantage to competing new crop feedgrain and wheat prices.   Chinese cotton prices and the A-Index were mixed-to-lower this week.

Cotton-specific influences this week included a continuation of very light-to-moderate demand in inactive/slow physical trading. Reported weekly export sales were weak while actual export shipments were at the par level.  Weather conditions included sunshine.  U.S. boll opening progress was ahead of schedule while harvest progress matched the historical pace.

The pattern of ICE cotton futures open interest was mixed this week.  The regular Tuesday snapshot of speculative positioning (through September 20) showed 5,905 liquidated hedge fund longs, partially offset by 255 fewer hedge fund shorts, week over week;  the index fund net long position, was barely changed.

CBOT new crop corn and soybean futures both had a rising-then-falling pattern across the week, while KC wheat futures appeared to take one big step higher. The U.S. dollar index rose to 22-year highs buoyed by weakness in competing currencies and hawkish Federal Reserve policy moves. This, in turn, is likely contributing to the weakness in stock and commodity markets by raising expectations of economic recession.

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.