Trading in cotton futures remains bearish

24 Dec '08

2 min read

Market remains range bound on light trading as most participants are willing to wait until 2009 to put on new positions. China has a few last minute buyers trying to use year end quotas before they expire, but for the most part cotton is very quiet. Volume was only 4,000 futures and 2,000 options as we get closer to year end. Open interest is still falling as the dollar keeps trying to move higher. Oil and gold are two of the biggest losers as the stock markets are also seeing profit taking during the shortened holiday week.

Domestic consumption estimates were right at 4 million bales but lower than the USDA projections. Cert stocks actually went up this week as we are seeing more cotton awaiting review. There are still several weeks before FND for the H'09, but we expect more cotton to hit the board if the spreads remain narrow.

There is no incentive to take delivery of the board in H'09 unless it has the old crop penalty and that seems very unlikely after the big stopper in Z'08. For now demand estimates for next year are bearish and the economy in general proposes that we will see commodity prices under pressure for quite a while.

Technically, cotton is starting to look more positive as the moving averages are getting close to crossing. However, the dollar has bounced off the lows and open interest keeps falling. Cotton is starting to build a sideways trading channel 40/48 as we may be testing the top of the range going into year end. RSI is at 52 and the momentum is certainly looking more positive as we start to enter the more friendly seasonal demand period starting in late December.

Ecom USA

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