Market Report

Thursday Cotton Bullets – 24/06/2022

Nasty week for Cotton with no bid for speculative longs who get smoked!

You will either step forward into growth, or you will step back into safety – Abraham Maslow

CTN22 – 136.32 (-7.00)
CTZ22 – 102.01 (-6.06)
CTH23 – 97.73 (-5.94)
CTK23 – 95.33 (-5.68)
CTN23 – 93.01 (-5.50)

Zhengzhou CF209 – 18,275 (-240)

Cotlook “A” Forward Index – 130.70 (-3.90)

Daily volume – TBA
AWP – 140.47
Open interest – TBA
Certificated stock – TBA

July/Dec spread – (+34.31)
Dec/Mch spread – (+4.28)

July 1st Notice Day – 24th June 2022
September Options Expiry – 19th August 2022
December Options Expiry – 11th November 2022
December 1st Notice Day – 23rd November 2022

Introduction

– It has been an awful week for the cotton market with Z22 collapsing to a low of 101.51 from a high of 123.87 for the biggest weekly drop since June 2011.
– Prices closed near to the 101.51 low of the day in today’s trade, leading everyone to question when does the pain stop? More on that later!
– The end user exposed to July on call fixations has been hurt very badly, noting the spread between N22 and Z22 went out to over 35c/lb (N over Z22) this week but with 1st notice day tomorrow, their issue is finally over in view the “on call sales” are cleared up.
– EAP’s efforts will now solely concentrate on Z22 and what is likely to happen in the season ahead.

– The extensive fundamental, statistical, monetary and historical analysis in trying to predict the market has paid off for our clients in the last week, noting we are acutely aware we are not always correct in our analysis!
– It is always important to look at alternative points of view to our own and EAP were alerted by friends this week of a character under the pseudonym of “Grandma” previously advocating the high probability of Z22 going to 150 and beyond.
– In fairness, many traders clearly had this opinion, noting that there are bets out to the “250 strike” call option in the December contract.
– Only this week “Grandma” stated and I quote… “she is a solid and steady buyer of Z22 on a scale down basis” which was when the market was at 108c/lb. At some point the bounce will come and “Grandma” could be right for a short while, but will likely forget to mention that her followers are nursing a 32c drop in just over a month based on today’s close….OUCH!!!
– In our last “What’s app” to clients today we mentioned that we should see some support between 103 and 108c/lb but with a close of 102.01 even our own today’s guesstimate has so far proven to be a tad optimistic!

– The above chart of Z22 showed that today’s closing price of 102.01 was even below the 200 day moving average lying at 102.12. This is technically significant and we may even now test the late February 2022 low at 98.88c/lb before we see support.
– Noting the high of 133.79 was on the 17th May we have actually seen a move down of 32.28c/lb in a matter of just over a month and rather staggeringly, a drop of more than 22c in just 3 business days!
– When prices collapsed in Z11 back in early June 2011, the drop was even more calamitous, falling 47.70 c/lb in just over a month. The bounce, when it came, saw a move up of nearly 50% of the move down.
– Lets assume we do see support at 98.88, then this would equate to a move of 3491 points. A 50% retrace of that move might take us back as as high as 116.33 but we somehow doubt that. If and when we get a bounce, then EAP expect it to fail somewhere between 107 and 115c/lb and would be where we would wish to go scale up bearish again!

Conclusion

We are definitely NOT bearish at 102c/lb. We note however that if the rout continues there should be some support at 98.88 down to the original breakout at about 96.50 and expect a meaningful bounce to occur to relieve the oversold condition of the market. However, only when we see the support can we determine the extent of that bounce, noting the tide has firmly turned for Cotton and a lot of the Commodity markets. Considering the magnitude of the drop, we firmly believe this will likely spill over into the same sort of treatment for its big brothers which all had huge upward moves over the last 2 years. As we have previously opined, we think the Cotton season ahead will prove to be an inverse season, where the high comes early (read 133.79 on the 17th May) and a move to the mid 90’s at some point in the season looks on the cards!

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Written by:

Jo Earlam

Jo Earlam

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