Market Report

Thursday Cotton Bullets – 26/05/2022

Concerns over Chinese imports

Stop making excuses and start making changes. When you stop making excuses and begin to make changes, a whole new life will open up before you.

CTN22 140.61 (-4.55)
CTZ22 124.33 (-0.28)
CTH22 119.54 (-0.41)

Zhengzhou CF209 – 21,540 (unch)

Cotlook “A” Index – 159.70 (-1.30) – 25th May

Daily volume – 37,601
AWP – 143.24
Open interest – 209,517
Certificated stock – 1,088

July / Dec spread – (+16.28)
Dec / March spread – (+4.79)

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

– We are now looking to Dec ’22 as the lead month and, watching the market action, it certainly feels that new crop and old crop are playing to different sets of rules. The old crop July ’22 (below) is incredibly volatile and is trading, more than anything, around expiry economics and the large unfixed in call position. Dec ’22 seems to be behaving a lot more rationally and should perhaps give the market some cause for consideration. Dec closed today at 124.33, down 28 on the day and continuing a steady erosion from the 133.79 life of contract high made on 17th May.

– China April imports were recorded at 173,000 MT (just under 800,000 bales). So far this season China has imported 5.7 million bales. At this pace, with three months to go, it would seem a downward revision in the USDA’s estimate of 8.8 million bales for 2021/22 is inevitable.
– As we have often commented in these pages, Turkey has been one of the major beneficiaries of post-covid demand, benefitting from both the global surge in textile demand and its proximity to Europe. Accordingly, much capacity has been added and, regardless of the current headwinds for demand, consumption is set to grow in 2022/23. However, the Turkish farmer has been equally as happy with their returns and production will also increase. As a result of this, we are likely to see Turkish imports decrease in 2022/23.
– Over the past week, as can be seen from the below map, Texas has received some rainfall. However, this is a long way from a drought breaker and more is needed soon with insurance deadlines looming in early June!

– The CFTC Cotton-on-Call report, based positions as of 20th May, showed that July ’22 continued to be fixed, but as we enter the last month of N22 there remain 42,172 net on call sales to be fixed. Expect volatility!
– US export sales dropped once again recording 37,000 bales for the 2021/22 season. The only destination of note was India with net sales of 21,200 bales. Net sales for 2022/23 totalled 95,400 bales, once again Latin American made up the bulk of this demand with a total of 55,500 bales for the region. Exports of 318,500 bales were reported.

Conclusion

We maintain that 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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