ICE cotton sees lowest settlement in nine months on Friday

The December contract settled at 79.08, losing over 400 points over the course of the week. Harvest pressure of the northern hemisphere and a weak demand for the physical fiber contributed to the falling market.

The delayed USDA export report released Thursday for the week ending October 3rd showed that new sales upland and pima combined for the week were a decent 142k running bales, but cancellations of nearly 67k bales out of Turkey slashed the number by almost half.

Growing U.S. cert stocks is another contributing factor, with the current stock level of over 110k bales and almost 48k bales in waiting review.

Technicals are looking very bearish as we easily broke through and are now trading below the long term support level established at the beginning of the year. The market is looking oversold, and is due for a rebound, but the short term trend continues to look negative.

Prices start to look competitive enough to attract physical demand and mill fixations, which will provide some support for the market. Carry has come back to the market with a spread of 150 points between December and March contracts, and it’s likely to widen out further in the near future.