CT — Cotton

Softs

Seasonality (Müller method)

Seasonal index per lookback window (5/10/15/20y), Jan 1 = 100. Hover for exact values on any date; drag to zoom, double-click to reset.

Methodology: for every pair of consecutive trading days, the per-calendar-day rate of change is computed and assigned to each calendar day the gap spans (e.g. a Friday→Monday move contributes to Saturday, Sunday and Monday alike). For each calendar day, the geometric mean of that rate across all years in the lookback window gives the average daily move; the seasonal index is the cumulative product of these averages walked forward from Jan 1 = 100. This is Philipp Müller's method, as published in the VTAD journal:
„Über die Konstruktion mathematisch korrekter Seasonal Charts und deren Analyse“ (VTAD, German)

Commercial COT Positioning

Report Date

2026-07-28

Commercial Net

-100,367

Net Change 1W

+2,311

Net Change 4W

-16,845

COT Index 26W

COT Index 156W

Last 10 years. Top: Commercial net position (long - short), CFTC Legacy Futures Only, historical + weekly combined. Bottom: Commercial COT Index, 26-week and 156-week stochastic (0-100); dotted lines mark the 20/80 bullish/bearish thresholds used on the main dashboard.

Forward Curve

Trade Date

2026-07-31

Structure

Backwardation

Trend

Strengthening

Spread

-1.29

Spread %

-1.58%

Spread % over Time: front/next continuous-contract spread as % of the front settlement. Positive = Contango (next contract pricier), negative = Backwardation. Latest Curve Shape: settlement price across every available contract depth for the most recent trade date - the full term structure, not just front/next.

Fundamental Overlay

WASDE Ending Stocks

bearish

Crop Phase

harvest

Consensus: 0/1 bullish

Informational only - never folded into the Core Score above. As of 2026-08-04. „CONAB vs. WASDE“ is a credibility cross-check (delta %), not a directional read.

USDA Crop Progress — Cotton

Planted (as of 2026-06-28)

97%

Current season only (source: USDA NASS QuickStats, released Mondays during the growing season). Shows how far along planting/harvest is - complements the Fundamental Overlay's Crop Phase flag, which only shows whether the market is currently inside a planting/harvest window, not how far along it is.

USDA Acreage & Prospective Plantings — Cotton

Year

2026

Prospective Plantings

9,510,000

Acreage (Actual)

9,700,000

Revision

+2.0%

Prospective Plantings (released end of March, farmer intentions survey) vs. Acreage (released end of June, actual reported planted acres) - source: USDA NASS QuickStats. "Revision" is the % change from the March intentions to the June actual. Full history is loaded (from 2010, or from whenever each report type was first published under a distinct label), unlike the current-season-only Crop Progress chart above.

Crop Drought Index — Cotton

Week Ending

2026-07-14

Weighted D2-D4 %

7.6%

YoY Δ

-2.1pp

Percentile vs. History

37th

Full history since 2009-12-29 (source: US Drought Monitor, production-weighted by growing-belt state, same weighting as the dashboard's Drought (D2-D4) column). YoY Δ compares to the same week last year; Percentile vs. History ranks the current reading against this commodity's entire drought series so far (higher = more severe than usual).