Response of U.S. Cotton Export Sales to ICE Cotton Futures Price (Scroll Down for More Discussion)
Discussion
The red line shows daily settlement of nearby ICE cotton futures, in cents per pound. The blue peaks and valleys reflect weekly net export sales for the 2023/24 marketing year, in thousands of running bales. The graph generally shows the expected demand response to fluctuating futures prices for the 2024 crop. Generally, as U.S. prices fluctuate higher, export sales (“quantity demanded”) fluctuate lower. For the week ending January, 2024, net sales of U.S. cotton for export were fairly decent, following a strong showing the previous week. This is what would be expected given the relative cheapness of U.S. cotton.