Another crazy day as we traded in a volatile 300 point range testing the highs and lows. The real story is that commodity markets in general are getting flooded with new money which is fueling an irrational commodity complex trading on inflation fears and pulling cotton along for the ride.
The USD continues to slide to new record lows even though it managed to find some support for a few months, but now is in a free fall once again. This will certainly add even more optimism to the argument that commodities have further upside as soybeans broke through technical resistance and set a new high at 15.00 usd/bu.
Volume in cotton was strong again today with 35,000 futures and 35,000 options as we continue to see good fund buying under the market on dips. Export sales were less than expected at just over 200,000 bales which was well below last weeks number of 500,000. However, the shipments remain weak at 260,000 and this number is well below what we need to reach the USDA estimate.
This may lead to another cut in exports next month and possibly another bearish S&D report. We have FND on the CBOT tomorrow for grains and this might explain the volatile action in wheat down over 100 cents while soybeans were close to limit up. We are still in the fight for acres in the U.S. which will be announced by the USDA at the end of March.
Technically, we are running into some resistance targets above 80 cents in K'08. This cotton market is starting to enter overbought territory as we trade the top of the range in volatility, open interest, spec positions, cert stock and relative strength. General market mood is bullish on technicals and outside commodity markets.
We will have to see a pull back in the grains before cotton will have a chance to correct, but we seem to be carving out a possible sideways trading range between 77/80 cents. Demand will certainly slow down in the short term, but the direction of grains will have a bigger impact nearby.
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