It was a quiet, choppy day in New York, with futures mostly pondering tomorrow's USDA supply and demand estimates. The first call was for unchanged, and the ensuing 10 lower March opening was lightly bought by some residual commercial buying as well as some fund buying, which could still be some index fund re-balancing.
For the most part though the spread between March and May was the most attention seeking, tracking in as narrow as 55 points whilst mostly exchanging between 65 and 75 points difference. For the session the front months were confined to a 35 point range for the entire session, trading either side of unchanged for the majority of it. Aside of spread trading there was little to report, with some late fund buying pushing the market to a slight gain in the front 3 months of 3-11 points.
As anticipated, this morning's US export sales and shipments were hardly worth reporting. New sales of just 41,900 upland and 9,000 Pima reflect the lack of competitiveness for US cotton right now. Shipments were not much better with a combined 171,000 upland and Pima bales exiting. At the current rate it is very unlikely that the US will ship out anything remotely close to the USDA target of 16.0 million bales.
Tomorrow at 7.30 CST the USDA will release their monthly supply and demand estimates. A full coverage will take place tomorrow, but for the record we are expecting some slight increases to both the US and world endings stocks, with overall tradebeing reduced.