Across the week ending Friday, October 3, ICE cotton futures stair-stepped down to 7-month lows (see chart above courtesy of Barchart.com). The daily settlements showed alternating daily gains and losses. Dec’25 cotton settled Thursday at 65.09 cents per pound, with Friday’s trade narrowing around the weekly lows. Chinese cotton prices declined across the week, while the A-Index of world prices was mixed.
Other futures markets followed various pathways this week, being variously affected by the federal shutdown that began October 1. CBOT corn and soybeans both glided lower, then shot higher, stabilized, and shot higher again. KC wheat started the week in a sideways pattern before following a similar path to the aforementioned commodities. ICE WTI crude oil futures gradually descended lower. The U.S. Dollar Index gyrated along a slight down-trend across the week. Other macro influences (i.e., GDP, inflation, and interest rate policy) remained mixed in their expectation and implication for slow economic growth.
Cotton-focused market influences were hard to document in the absence of regular weekly data from USDA AMS and USDA FAS due to the federal shutdown.
Recent harvest weather influences included scattered rainfall over parts of Arizona, New Mexico, and parts of the Southeast. The likely onset of La Niña conditions could contribute to a drier fall. This could be neutral/beneficial to the maturing 2025 crop, at the cost of early dryness in early 2026. On the other side of the world, the precocious Indian monsoon is stronger/later than normal in what should be the withdrawal phase. It remains to be seen whether recent floods in India and especially Pakistan are a net benefit or detriment to summer-sown crops like cotton.
Through Thursday, September 25, the shifts in ICE cotton open interest were mixed compared to the previous day. The federal shutdown prevented an update of the Tuesday (September 23) snapshot of speculative open interest. The latter reflected short positioning with 1,723 additional hedge fund shorts, week over week, reinforced by 1,582 fewer (liquidated) hedge fund longs and a 2,808 position contraction of the index trader net long position.
The dynamics of ICE cotton futures may also represent a wet blanket on the market. It remains true that unfixed call sales (by mills) are at an historically low level, perhaps reflecting the cautionary buying on the demand side. In terms of ratios, unfixed call purchases (by suppliers) outweigh unfixed call sales by over two-fold across all contracts, as of September 19 (not updated due to the federal shutdown). For the Dec’25 contract alone, there were over three unfixed call purchases for every unfixed call sale.
For more details and data on Old Crop and New Crop fundamentals, plus other near term influences, follow these links (or the drop-down menus above) to those sub-pages.