Over the past three months, cotton futures market bulls have been fed a steady diet of “nothing burgers,” and March futures prices (CTH25) scored a new contract low on Thursday. Last week’s USDA annual and quarterly supply and demand data was deemed overall bearish for cotton. The agency raised its U.S. cotton crop production estimate by 159,000 bales from last month’s report. It increased cotton yield by 44 lbs., to 836 lbs. per acre. U.S. cotton carryover was increased by 400,000 bales from December. Total use was cut 300,000 bales from last month, with exports down 300,000 bales, to 11.0 million. USDA put the national average on-farm cash cotton price for 2024-25 at 65 cents, down 1 cent from the December report. Meantime, global cotton carryover was forecast at 77.91 million bales for 2024-25, up from 76.02 million bales in December and compared to 74.16 million bales in 2023-24.
