The current allocation of volume, open interest, and a lot more cotton futures information, can be found on the ICE futures website under “Featured Reports”.  Volume (viewed above as the green line) is defined as the total daily number of contracts traded in a daily session. The level of volume is often used to gauge the strength of continuing or changing trends. Typical cotton daily volume bounces around between 10,000 and 25,000 contracts.  Through Thursday, June 26, ICE cotton futures showed above average volumes between 39,350 contracts (on June 26) and 60,236 contracts (on June 20).  The Dec’25 and Mar’26 contracts had 67% and 21% of the volume, respectively, as of June 26.

Open interest (the red line above) refers to the number of active positions at the end of the day (not double counting both the buyer and seller). Open interest by contract has a similar front month concentration as does volume, e.g., the Dec’25 and Mar’26 contracts had 75%, and 14% of the open interest, respectively, as of June 26.  Open interest does not fluctuate as much as daily volume, but there are patterns where sharp surges or declines in open interest are associated with sudden rallies or sell-offs, often in high volume.  For the week ending June 26 the day-to-day shifts in ICE cotton open interest declined steadily.  Coupled with increasing daily price settlements, this had the appearance of short covering.