A change in direction was obvious well before the open outcry began as we were 100 pts lower on overnight trading after closing 100 pts lower from the highs on Wednesday. After hitting record open interest today at 261,000 contracts, the funds were rumored to start selling cotton futures as the funds rebalance commodities each year starting on the 5th business day of the year.
According to several reports, this will conclude until the 9th business day which ends tomorrow and the result this year has lead to some fund selling which obviously triggered some bearish options today and yesterday as well as some sell stops. Volume was strong today with 41,000 futures and 31,000 options as the profit taking continues after 9-week highs were set yesterday.
Fed Chairman Bernake spoke today and indicated a good chance for further cuts in interest rates coming at the end of the month. This will probably result in another 25 basis points which also had a bearish effect on bonds and the dollar as the stock market made a triple digit gain.
Export sales today were in line with last week which is almost 65% lower than the four week average with only 68,500 running bales of new business and 192,000 in shipments which was above last week and in line with the 4 week average.
However, if you notice on page 2 in attached PDF, at this pace we are well behind schedule and would only reach just above 12 million bales compared to the 16.2 million bale current USDA estimate. The USDA report tomorrow is not expected to see any big changes with some rumors about China and Pakistan production cuts, but possibly a fall in U.S. exports could offset those.
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.jpg?tr=w-120,h-60,c-at_max,cm-pad_resize,bg-ffffff "UBM China (Shanghai)")
-Ltd..jpg?tr=w-120,h-60,c-at_max,cm-pad_resize,bg-ffffff "Thermore (Far East) Ltd.")
