Cotton is trading with 7 to 23 point losses so far into the new week. Dec cotton was the outsider for the market, closing the last trade day with a 3 point gain. Dec finished the week 27 points above last Friday’s settle. The other active futures were 3 to 68 points in the red for the day, leading May to a weekly pullback of 241 points.  

CFTC reported the cotton spec traders were dropping longs and adding new shorts during the week that ended 3/19. That reduced their net long by 3.6k contracts to 89,522. Commercial cotton hedgers reduced their net short by 4.6k contracts to 127.9k. 

Analysts are looking for Thursday’s Planting Intentions report to show between 10.4m and 11.3m acres for 2024/25 cotton. The average 11.3m acre estimate would be a 1.1m acre increase from last year and is 300k acres over USDA’s Outlook Forum assumptions. 

USDA’s weekly Cotton Market review showed 3,612 bales were sold at spot for the week, averaging 87.14 cents/lb. The season’s total cash sales reached 796k bales vs 494k bales last year and 1.54m bales 2yr ago. The Cotlook A Index for 3/21 was 85 points lower to 97 cents flat. The AWP was revised 360 points lower to 72.50 cents per pound, in effect for farm program purposes through next Thursday. ICE certified stocks were shown at 41,756 bales as of 3/20.

May 24 Cotton  closed at 91.53, down 68 points, currently down 23 points

Jul 24 Cotton  closed at 91.85, down 41 points, currently down 19 points

Dec 24 Cotton  closed at 83.95, up 3 points, currently down 21 points