Doane Cotton Close: Weather Forecast Keeps Futures on Defensive

It’s the same story as Friday. Forecasts for some long-awaited rain in west Texas and a historical pattern of significant “drought breaking” changes in patterns for that part of the Plains around Memorial Day have cotton futures on the defensive. Technical damage this week was severe, leading to last week’s counsel for futures/options users to push price protection to 50% of expected production.Today’s Crop Progress report from NASS is not helpful to market bulls either. The crop is now 30% planted, down just 4 pts from the 5-year average and 8 pts ahead of last year at this time.We’ve said for weeks that it seemed the surprising and persistent strength in old crop cotton was the only logical reason for new crop strength in the face of huge global stocks. Thus, our advice to have half your expected production priced; unusually aggressive for this early in the crop year.