Warming under sunny skies forecast for Texas High Plains following light freeze in the northwest. Mills priced 1,251 on-call lots in December. U.S. Far East premium widened.
Cotton futures settled lower Friday, trading most of the session in the red and extending the prior dayΆs sharp reversal down.
Spot December finished at a seven-session low close, down 73 points to 69.07 cents, in the lower half of its 130-point range from up 11 points at 69.91 to down 119 points at 68.61. It lost 150 points for the week.
March settled down 61 points to 69.47 cents and December 2017 finished down 99 points to 69.08 cents. For the week, March dropped 142 points and December 2017 shed 166 points.
Volume slowed to an estimated 24,906 lots from 36,009 lots the previous session when spreads accounted for 13,095 lots or 36% and EFP 327 lots. Options volume totaled 3,810 calls and 2,623 puts.
A warming to the low to middle 80s under sunny skies is forecast for the Lubbock area over the weekend after overnight lows touched the freezing mark around Muleshoe in the northwestern Texas High Plains.
The normal first freeze date for that location is Oct. 20, earliest in the regionΆs main cotton area. Light freezes or frosts or applications of harvest-aid chemicals are typically needed ahead of the killer punch to facilitate plant dry-down for harvesting.
A hard freeze, which can arrive suddenly at this time of year on the Plains, can be damaging if it hits when cotton is green and sappy ahead of any preparatory frosts, light freezes or use of harvest-aid chemicals.
Producers continued to apply boll openers and defoliants this week as harvesting expanded across the region. No rain is in the forecast through at least Thursday.
Meanwhile, mills priced 1,251 on-call lots in December last week and producers priced 275 lots, reducing their unpriced positions to 21,491 lots and 11,736 lots, respectively, according to the latest report by the Commodity Futures Trading Commission.
The net call difference narrowed 976 lots to 9,755 lots, which was 6.73% of DecemberΆs declining open interest, compared with 6.95% a week earlier. The unpriced mill position outweighed that of producers by a ratio of 1.83:1, compared with 1.89:1 the week before.
Mills added 742 lots in March, 358 in May, 692 in July and 231 in December 2017, while producers added 68 lots in March and priced 66 lots in July and 107 lots in December 2017.
Across the board, unpriced positions were up 772 lots to 84,085 on the mill side and down 375 lots to 24,683 on the producer side.
On the competitive-pricing scene, prices of the five lowest-priced world growths for the Far East gained 276 points to 78.09 cents for the week ended Thursday, according to USDA, while the lowest-priced U.S. cotton of comparable quality landed there rose 290 points to 80.05 cents.
The U.S. premium thus widened 14 points to 1.96 cents. The adjusted world price for the program week ahead, reflecting transportation and quality differentials, is figured at 60.66 cents. This of course leaves the marketing loan gain at zero. The fine count adjustment for qualities better than 31-3-35 is 14 points.
Futures open interest expanded 1,188 lots Thursday to 258,128, with DecemberΆs down 1,041 lots to 147,373 and MarchΆs up 1,128 lots to 74,397. Certified stocks were unchanged at 28,367 bales.
