For the week ending Friday, October 18, the nearby Dec’24 ICE cotton futures contract tumbled early from the weekly highs near 72.50 before gyrating sideways between 72 and 70 cents per pound  (see chart above courtesy of Barchart.com).  The nearby Dec’24 ICE cotton settled Friday at 70.99 cents per pound, while the more distant Dec’25 settled at 72.87.  Chinese cotton prices eroded this week while the A-Index of world price took a more discrete step down.

In other markets, nearby CBOT corn and soybean futures, as well as KC wheat futures, all first trended lower, then level, then ended the wee with an upward stair-set. U.S. dollar index rose steadily, peaked Thursday, and then ended the week in a slight downtrend. Dollar strength on Thursday was credited to stronger than expected U.S. economic indicators. Other macro influences (i.e., GDP, inflation, and interest rate policy) remained mixed.

Cotton-specific influences this week included  improved 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 clearer and drier skies over the U.S. Cotton Belt.

Daily levels of ICE cotton open interest increased across the week ending October 17, in conjunction with mixed price settlements.  This was associated with mixed speculative positioning.  As of Tuesday, October 15 (released Friday, October 18) the weekly snapshot of speculative positioning showed 2,452 more hedge fund longs, partially balanced by  by 1,928 new hedge fund shorts, week over week.  The weekly adjustment to to index fund net long position was a 705 cut.

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.