Cotton Firms Up on Friday

The cotton market pulled back into the close, but held onto 30 to 90 point gains for the session. July futures ended the day 123 points off the session high, but about 150 points off the week’s low. July was still at a 309 point loss for the week. USDA’s weekly Cotton Market Review showed that the average cash price was 88 points stronger for the week at 78.47 cents. The report had 26,390 bales sold for the week bringing the yearly total to 633,689 bales. USDA’s WASDE cash price for cotton was UNCH at 82 cents for old crop and was set at 78 cents for new crop. 

CFTC’s weekly update showed short covering for the managed money cotton traders. That lightened the group’s net short by 8k contracts to 13,842. Commercial cotton traders added 10.7k new short hedges through the week that ended 5/9, leaving them 37,032 contracts net short. 

USDA’s WASDE report had old crop cotton abandonment 130k bales higher. That lifted the yield slightly to 950 lbs/acre for a net 210k bale lighter crop. Exports were also boosted by 400k bales to 12.6 million. On net old crop stocks were 600k tighter at 3.5 million. For new crop, USDA’s initial ideas are for a 8.71 million acre harvest off 11.26 million planted acres. Production is forecasted 1.03m higher yr/yr at 15.5 million bales. Stocks are forecasted to shrink by 200k to 3.3 million noting a 900k bale increase yr/yr to exports. 

The NASS Cotton Ginnings data showed 14.116 million bales were ginned for the season through March. That is down from 17.1m bales last year. 

The Cotlook A Index was down by 225 points to 93.45 cents for 5/10. The AWP for cotton was raised 128 points to 67.97 cents. 

Jul 23 Cotton  closed at 80.53, up 91 points,

Dec 23 Cotton  closed at 80.15, up 55 points,

Mar 24 Cotton  closed at 80.22, up 47 points