For the week ending Friday, September 27, the most active Dec’24 ICE cotton futures contract traded sideways between 74.50 and 72.50 cents per pounds.  Friday then saw a drop to the weekly low of 71.68 before barely recovering and settling at 72.72 cents per pound (see chart above courtesy of Barchart.com). The more distant Dec’25 ICE cotton settled at 72.86 cents per pound.  Chinese cotton prices rose modestly, but steadily, across the week.  The A-Index of world prices showed a flat/mixed pattern.

In other markets, CBOT corn and soybeans, as well as KC wheat futures all traded in a flat-to-higher pattern across the week. U.S. dollar index followed a sideways, gyrating pattern with latter weakness attributed to Chinese economic stimulus and subsequently rallying global stock markets.  Other macro influences (i.e., GDP, inflation, and interest rate policy) remained mixed.

Cotton-specific influences this week included weakening U.S. export sales. The pace of 2024/25 export shipments remained below the needed weekly average pace to reach USDA’s target level of exports, though this is not unusual for this supply-dominated time of the year.   In terms of weather, this week saw more unhelpful scattered showers over the eastern Cotton Belt, with additional potential damage from Hurricane Helene, especially over southwest Georgia.

ICE cotton futures open interest had a flat/mixed pattern for the week ending September 26.  Speculative repositioning this week showed a mixed pattern.  As of Tuesday, September 24 (released Friday September 27) the weekly snapshot of speculative positioning showed 1,538 fewer (liquidated) hedge fund longs, but outweighed by 11,170 fewer (covered) hedge fund shorts, week over week.  The weekly adjustment to  index fund net long position got 3,396 more positive.

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.