Global cotton production estimates reduced by 1.6 million bales

21 Apr '08

3 min read

After rallying nearly 1200 points since the first of April, cotton prices corrected quite sharply in the last half of the week. From a technical point of view, the rally had been almost a perfect 50% correction of the collapse from the March highs to the low on April 1st.

In any event, after a light volume, extremely sharp - short covering rally Wednesday morning the air got rather thin as once again, prices had run off and left demand below.

Wednesday's reversal off the extreme highs constituted an "outside day reversal". This is considered a very reliable signal and in this case, a sell signal - and sell they did as prices continued lower for the balance of the week. Trade buying was evident at lower levels Friday.

For the week, the May contract which goes into delivery Wednesday night, lost 328 points, July 309 points, and Dec 220 points.

What will make this upcoming delivery period potentially THE most interesting in a long while, is that not only are cert stocks at record highs but the market differences are actually reflecting considerably more than carrying charges. That too is a historical first as far as I know. This could make for a temping situation for a big fund that might have the nearly 400 million dollars it would take to take delivery of that much cotton.

Cotlook reduced their estimate of world production for the 2008/09 season by 1.6 million bales. That included a 482,000 bale reduction in China and 353,000 bales reduction in the US. Other significant cuts were predicted in Turkey and Brazil. Reductions in part reflected switching of cotton to food crops.

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