Market Report

Thursday Cotton Bullets – 12/05/2022

Increased production and reduced consumption for 2022/23

Life is too short, or too long, for me to allow myself the luxury of living it so badly. – Paulo Coelho.

CTN22 145.53 (+1.93)
CTZ22 127.67 (+2.92)
CTH22 122.35 (+2.76)

Zhengzhou CF209 – 21,260 (+30)

Cotlook “A” Index – 161.70 (unch) – 11th May

Daily volume – 26,131
AWP – 147.10
Open interest – 202,762
Certificated stock – 1,101

July / Dec spread – (+17.86)

July Options Expiry – 10th June 2022
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

– The market reacted strongly to today’s first WASDE of 2022/23 (below), though it may be said that the numbers contained little that participants should not have been broadly aware of. Perhaps taking this into account, a spike higher to 147.95 basis the front month July ’22 was followed by a retreat to the eventual close at 145.53, up 193 points on the day. New crop Dec ’22, on the other hand, held on to its gains closing at 127.67, up 292 points for the day just off its daily high of 127.95.
– Elsewhere, it was another red day on the stock markets. As can be seen on the below charts, both the S&P 500 and the Dow Jones look particularly ugly, and this is rather worrying from a macro perspective for cotton’s future.

– The U.S. Dollar index broke out to new highs at 104.955, the index remains far above the major moving averages and has broken out of its long term resistance at circa 104.08. You can see from the chart below the significance of the previous triple top and the significant lack of resistance above the horizontal line on the below chart.

– The May WASDE was released today with the first estimates for the 2022/23 season. Global production is set to increase by 2.6 million bales year on year whilst consumption is reduced by 1 million bales.
– US production is reduced 1 million bales year on year to 16.5 million bales whilst Indian production increases 2 million (US stat) bales to 27.5 million bales. Chinese and Indian consumption have been reduced ½ million bales each whilst other major consumers have been maintained at the same level or received minor adjustments.
– For current crop 2021/22 US production was reduced 100,000 bales month on month with exports left unchanged. Indian production was reduced 1 million bales and exports 1/2 million bales. Whilst on the surface this would appear bullish it should come as no surprise to anyone who has been paying attention to the Indian market in the last year (at least!!) and the USDA Indian crop number remains at least 1 million stat bales too high.

– The CFTC Cotton-on-Call report, based positions as of 6th May, showed the end user continuing to take risk off, which is welcome, but July ’22 remains the largest ever position for this time of year at 50,340 contracts, which is not so welcome. Looking forward to new crop the total net on-call position is 47,874 contracts which is the third highest for this point in the year. 30,960 contracts of this position lie in the Dec ’22 contract which is, once again, the highest ever for this point.
– This week’s US Export Sales Report finally gave us a number we could agree with. Net sales for 2021/22 season totalled 27,500 bales, the lowest for the season. India was the largest buyer with 19,800 bales. New crop sales were a respectable 90,600 bales and were dominated by Latin America with a total of 71,300 bales going to the region. Exports of 364,500 bales continued to lag the required pace.

Conclusion

This week’s action has so far represented a pause in the sell off following Thursday’s limit down move and price action from here will need to be monitored very closely to see if this bull has finally ended or we have merely paused for breath? Involvement in N22 is something to avoid if possible, but for new crop December we maintain this contract is very fully valued above 125c/lb and the recent spike in N22 offered a golden opportunity to lock in a good proportion of new crop sales 25c/lb higher than one could get just 6 weeks ago.

Useful links

*Please note that we only share CFTC CTO on weekend reports. 

Written by:

Jo Earlam

Jo Earlam

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