The day started off very firm after good export sales in cotton as well as wheat, corn and soybeans which pushed everything toward testing the highs set earlier this week. We made it close, but found good trade selling today which kept the market in check despite good fund buying when the market tried to pull back close to unchanged.
Grains and oil also fell off around mid day which put more pressure on cotton to give back some of the early export related gains. Volume was friendly with 31,000 futures, but only 14,000 options as there seems to be more conviction that a short term high maybe established and we should prepare for a correction.
Sales were definitely good today with over 500,000 b/c which was a season high. However, it was not as positive as it sounds since over 300,000 bales was just from Mexico which does not show a well balanced return of demand from the market.
Also, the shipments were the same as last week which continue to remain on the same schedule which leads us to a 4 million bale shortfall from the current USDA estimate as shown on page 2 in attached PDF.
The other major feature today was a continuation of the weak stock market based on Bernake making several negative comments about further fiscal and monetary support needed to prevent a recession. We hit 15 month lows in the S&P index and this pull back in equities could trigger some profit taking from the over bought commodity sector which is due for a correction.
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