ICE Futures are trading both sides of its Monday close, in very tight ranges. The choppy trade is mildly surprising given USDA’s slight downgrade in the U.S. crop.
In its Monday afternoon report, the government indicated the nation’s 2018 cotton crop stood at 41% good/excellent versus its previous week’s rating of 43% good/excellent. Specifically, top producer Texas was rated 21% good/excellent, while number two Georgia was 69% good/excellent. Last year at this same time, the 2017 Crop stood at 61% good/excellent.
However, to some degree, today’s two-sided trade may be attributed to the market phenomenon known as Turnaround Tuesday. History says the market often takes a path on Tuesday opposite to that of Monday.
Given Monday saw a higher trade, albeit on muted volume, Tuesday is apt to profess weaker prices. Of course, the more insightful data the market wants to see will be this Thursday’s Weekly Sales and Exports, and the highly important July supply and demand numbers.
Technically, the December market has rallied nearly 400 points off last week’s low, but still remains in a deeply oversold state. In other words, it has fallen too fast, too deep with little correction, which is an understatement. From its June high of 9482 to its July low of 8175, the December market has collapsed over 1400 points over the course of 18 days.
Thus far, cotton’s overnight volume is a slow 2,000 contracts traded. For today, we expect to see a continued choppy trade.
In other related markets, the Chicago grains are lower, while the U.S. dollar and Dow Jones are moderately higher.
