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,  December 19, ICE futures showed above average volumes between 23,010 contracts (on December 16) and 35,824 contracts (on December 18).  The Mar’25 and May’25 contracts had 60% and 18% of the volume, respectively, as of December 19.

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 Mar’25 and May’25 contracts had 57%, and 19% of the open interest, respectively, as of December 19.  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 December 19, the day-to-day shifts in open interest in ICE cotton modestly increased. Coupled with the erosion of price settlements across the week, this had the appearance of new outright short positioning.