May Cotton Closes Down a Limit
With March’s expiration, May officially became the lead month, and May cotton saw a 4c drop. The other front months experienced losses ranging from 250 to 395 points and closed close to their day’s lows. Due to pre-weekend profit taking, the SVB bank failure, US employment data, and other factors, the Dollar Index fell 0.7% on Friday.
A managed money cotton selling program was observed for the week ending February 21 according to the updated Commitment of Traders data. The group became net short by 13k contracts as a result of the addition of 11k new shorts and the reduction of 4k longs.
A total of 13,633 million upland cotton bales have been classified this season, according to the USDA, with 14.084 million bales of total cotton, including pima, being included. That is 96% of the 22/23 production estimate.
9,030 bales were sold at spot for the week, with an average price of 80.87 cents, according to USDA’s weekly Cotton Market Review. For March 9, the Cotlook A Index dropped by 25 points to 96.95 cents. The AWP for cotton was lowered by 78 points to 71.95 cents by the USDA’s FSA.
- May 23 Cotton closed at 78.18, down 400 points,
- Jul 23 Cotton closed at 78.94, down 395 points,
- Dec 23 Cotton closed at 80.25, down 282 points
Reference: barchart.com
