Overnight ICE traded lower after the 3 day Martin Luther King weekend. The commodities market is feeling pressure posed by the macro economic environment. The Far East, Europe as well as Latin America showed that they are also concerned about a slowdown in the U.S. economy and this lead to huge sell offs from the international stock markets as much as 10% on Monday and Tuesday.
This prompted the Fed to come in this morning before the markets opened and made a 75 point cut in interest rates to try and stabilize the markets ahead of the scheduled meeting on Jan 29th where the market is estimating another possible cut.
Dow Jones recovered part of the losses after the emergency rate cut, but still made the 5th continuous down day. ICE pit trading was called to open around 200 points lower, but bounced off the lows following outside grain markets. Wheat being the most volatile of the grains, was traded lower in the early morning, then higher by more than 20 points, and then settled near limit down.
Cotton settled at 70 points lower on the front March contract, and 90 points on the forward contract months. As generally expected by the market, today's Spec Hedge report gives a net long position of 29.5%, up 2.1% from the week before.
Open interest was increased by nearly 22,000 contracts last week and created record high almost every single day as you can see on page 2 in attached PDF. Futures volume was strong today with 30,000 futures and 20,000 options.