Cotton Fading Lower at Midday

Cotton bunches by Tijana Drndarski via Unsplash

Cotton futures are heading lower so far on the Friday session, fading strength from earlier in the session. Contracts are down 29 to 53 points. The dollar index is down 251 points, with crude oil futures up just 12 cents/barrel at midday and well off their highs. 

The monthly Crop Production report showed acreage relatively unchanged, with yield down 33 lbs/ac at 807 lbs. That helped to drop the production total by 596,000 bales to 14.512 million bales. Exports were trimmed by 200,000 bales with the overall stocks total down 500,000 bales to 4 million bales.

Weekly Export Sales data total cotton export sale commitments at 4.764 million RB, which is the slowest since the 2016/17 marketing year. That is just 43% of the newly updated USDA export forecast, with the 5-year average for the current week at 53%.

The Seam ported 1,761 online cash cotton bale sales on Thursday, averaging 62.71 cents/lb. ICE cotton stocks were unchanged on September 12, leaving 265 bales of cert stocks. The Cotlook A Index was up 150 points on September 12 at 81.10 cents/lb. The USDA Adjusted World Price (AWP) was slashed by 127 points on Thursday afternoon 56 cents/lb. It is good through next Thursday.

Dec 24 Cotton  is at 69.96, down 42 points,

Mar 25 Cotton  is at 71.37, down 44 points,

May 25 Cotton  is at 72.58, down 36 points


On the date of publication, Austin Schroeder did not have (either directly or indirectly) positions in any of the securities mentioned in this article. All information and data in this article is solely for informational purposes. For more information please view the Barchart Disclosure Policy here.