The cotton market posted 7 to 113 point losses on Thursday. The death spiral liquidation continues for May, down 146 points, as longs get out before deliveries, with rest of the contracts following along. The US dollar index was up 226 points on the day, with crude oil back up 7 cents.

Export Sales data saw some improvement, with old crop sales at 146,112 RB, a 9-week high as the recent drop in prices have incentivized buying. Much of that was to China, with 92,600 RB in sales. New Crop sales were 80,077 RB, the highest in 5 weeks. Shipments were not as good, with 266,732 RB exported, an 8-week low.

Thursday afternoon’s Cotton on-Call report showed 6,900 contracts of unfixed call sales for May, down 3,672 on the week. July was up 5,426 contracts to 28,421 contracts. Overall, on the week unfixed call sales were up 2,828 contracts to 70,843 contracts. The unfixed call purchases are large for December at 40,708 contracts. 

ICE certified cotton stocks were up another 1,032 bales on April 17 at 172,732 bales. The Cotlook A Index was back down 65 points to 88.95 cents/lb on April 16. The AWP dropped another 325 points to 62.18 today and is good through next Thursday.

May 24 Cotton  closed at 78.1, down 146 points,

Jul 24 Cotton  closed at 80.61, down 72 points,

Dec 24 Cotton  closed at 77.41, down 113 points