Cotton prices zig zagged lower last week, making new recent lows before attempting to form an encouraging double bottom as April came to a close on Wednesday. For the month of April, July lost 163 points while Dec gained 40 points. However, cotton lost 24,670 in open interest last month which brought the two month loss to over 55,000 contracts.
After Wednesday's encouraging performance, the market failed to hold early strength Thursday morning despite the best export report of the season. Cotton fell and fell hard creating a bearish outside range day to the downside Thursday.
However, cotton was not alone in its troubles, not by a long shot. Bulls pulled the plug on one market after another as the U.S. dollar moved to its highest level in nearly two months.
When the smoke cleared from Thursday's broad collapse, the commodity research bureaus index of 19 commodities had lost over 900 points. The winners Thursday were the US dollar and the stock market although corn held its own. Quite possibly the change in sentiment of the greenback has been the most significant factor in cooling the previously red-hot speculative fever in commodities
As the week drew to a close, Outside markets, precious metals, row crops and unfortunately crude oil futures were quite stable to noticeably higher on Friday and by mid-session this spilled over into cotton to a limited extent. However, most of the recovery in the CRB Index Friday came from crude oil.
Fridays bounce for cotton prices was only the 4th positive close in the last two and a half weeks. Despite the attempt to stabilize on Friday May cotton still lost 141 for the week while July cotton lost 188. December cotton lost 220 points for the week.
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