Futures prices were initially lower on the electronic exchange, following on from a procession of negative equity market news early on.
The news that the BOJ had raised Japanese rates, as well as the negative US durable Goods data (-7.8% in January) were enough to see some large losses in the Asian equity indicies (Shanghai Composite was down a whopping 9%) which dragged the Dow down initially 200 points, however by day's end it was down a massive 416 points, falling a spectacular 200 points in one minute at 3pm today!!
Cotton was under pressure as a result, with the grain complex getting clobbered early on to the tune of over 20c/bu for Beans, Wheat and Corn. It was thus a surprise to see Cotton only off 100 points at the extreme this morning for May, July and December before some commercial buying held it together.
Prices remained stable but unable to gain much ground back, drifting either side of 53 cents in May, and 58 cents in December. Spreads actually managed to widen out having been narrow since the March squeeze began. May / July traded out to near 100 July premium whilst the May/December tracked as wide as 500 premium to Dec. Estimated volume today was decent at 16,256 lots.
This morning's spec hedge came in as expected slightly less short than last week. Across the week there was an overall expansion of both long positions (5,306 ) and short positions ( 3,295 ) to leave the overall net spec short position at 14,915 lots or 7.5% of total open interest.
For the second consecutive day there were no NYBOT notices, leaving the issues to date at 1,172 lots with a further 1,712 lots still yet to be assigned prior to today's session.