Thursday Cotton Falls Triple Digits

The old crop cotton prices were 147 to 184 points weaker for the Thursday close, leaving May contracts just 4 points off the daily low. May cotton is now back to the 18-wk moving average and nearly 17 cents/lb off the contract highs. New crop futures ended with 37 to 58 point losses. Dec is 1.73 cents/lb off the Feb high.  

Census data showed Feb cotton shipments were 1.54m bales, which was a 30% increase over January and was 12% over Feb ’23. The accumulated program reached 6.46m bales through Feb, vs 6.34m last year. 

USDA reported 85k RBs of cotton was sold during the week that ended 3/28. That was down 14% wk/wk but was up 4% from the 4-wk average. FAS data had new crop bookings at 23k RBs, led by sales to Honduras. 

USDA’s Ag Attache raised Brazil’s cotton production by 340k bales to 14.9 million, but cut carryout by 200k to 11 million. On net ending stocks were raised to 6.2m bales. The initial outlook for 24/25 cotton has area increasing to 1.87m HA and production up to 15.35 million. 

The Cotlook A Index was back down by 235 points to 95.60 cents/lb on 3/28. The AWP weakened by another 140 points to 69.48  ICE certified stocks were 14k bales higher to 81,664 bales for 4/1.

May 24 Cotton  closed at 87.14, down 184 points,

Jul 24 Cotton  closed at 88.57, down 161 points,

Dec 24 Cotton  closed at 83.52, down 58 points