ICE Cotton closes slightly higher this week

Much of the bullish news has been priced into the market already, as evidenced by futures having stayed high enough to prevent the occurrence of sizeable old crop export sales to mills.

One key factor to watch is the movement of the cert stock, about half of which is getting a new owner and could be de-certed (as we started to see in recent days) and exported, even if it has yet to find an end buyer.

All eyes were on today’s US jobs report and, at 195,000 new jobs for the month June, traders took this as a sign of imminent “tapering” leading to higher bond yields and a stronger dollar.

The Fed will likely not be happy with the speed of the move and may continue to try talking yields back down, but they clearly have a difficult challenge on hand: how to prevent bonds from dropping swiftly and sharply, and slowing the economy, when everyone knows that bonds are going to fall. Bonds will have to overshoot before finding a rational level.

ECOMUSA Inc