It was a shortened trading week due to the Christmas holiday, and ICE cotton futures started the week non eventful, but finished it with three digit gains. The H4 contract topped over 85 cents and reached a two and a half month high during the morning trading hours.
Physical activities were decent for the week ending December 19th which supported market rally, but news out of China suggests that the country plans to end its current stockpiling program and replace it with direct subsidies to the farmers, which should negatively impact the global cotton prices.
2013 is coming to a close and the big story has to be U.S. equity markets which made their first significant rally since the credit bubble popped in 2008.
This created some shifting of investments to take place, moving funds away from safer less volatile sectors such as treasuries and commodities. There is also a global shift of foreign currencies heading south which should push the unappreciated USD higher as we go forward. That will continue to weigh on commodities long term.
Some commodities are more inflated than others but cotton for the most part has limited down side since cost of production has risen significantly in the last 5 years. The upside is also limited based on China's large reserve stocks. So based on the current situation, don't expect any big changes for cotton in 2014.