The weekly summary
The week's fibre, yarn, garment, home textile, freight and currency numbers in one summary. Read it here, take it by email every Monday, or download it as plain text. Free.
The week's fibre, yarn, garment, home textile, freight and currency numbers, in one summary. Read it on this page, take it by email every Monday, or download it as a plain text file: it is the same report, built once, in three formats. The issue is published here before it is sent, so you can read a full one and decide afterwards whether you want it in your inbox. Three fields to subscribe and one link to leave. Every figure names the source it came from and the date that source was last read, which is the whole difference between a market summary and a newsletter. Nothing is sold in it and nobody else gets your address.
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The week's fibre, yarn, garment, home textile, freight and currency numbers, each with its date and its source. Free. Your address is used for this one email and nothing else, it is never visible to any other subscriber, and one click stops it. The cotton yarn reference sheet joins the same email once it publishes, so this is the only list there is.
What the email carries, sources last read 17 October 2026
A line appears only when its source could actually be read this week. Nothing is estimated or carried over, so a missing line is the honest answer rather than a stale figure.
Fibre
What the raw material costs.
- Cotlook A Index 91.45 c/lb That is 2.02 $/kg. Up 0.80c on the week. Reading for 15 October 2026. Cotton Outlook, as printed in the USDA world market prices report.
- US spot cotton 75.48 c/lb up 0.48c on the week. Week to 16 October 2026. USDA.
- Pakistan KCA spot Rs 18,580/maund That is 81.6 c/lb. Down Rs 100 on the week, the 37.324 kg lint maund, quoted 16 October 2026. Karachi Cotton Association official rate, read via KhiStocks.
- China cotton futures 15,880 CNY/t That is 107.7 c/lb. January 2027, the most traded month, down 0.09% on the day (16 October 2026). Zhengzhou Commodity Exchange.
- China polyester futures 8,226 CNY/t That is 55.8 c/lb. Polyester staple fibre, December 2026, the most traded month, down 0.65% on the day (16 October 2026). Zhengzhou Commodity Exchange.
- China polyester spot 9,085.50 CNY/t That is 61.6 c/lb. Polyester staple fibre as the physical market actually traded it, not the exchange, down 0.18% on the day (16 October 2026). It is 860 CNY/t above the futures line above, so cash is the tighter side of the two. SunSirs, China Commodity Data Group.
- WTI crude 96.88 $/bbl down 1.19 on the week. The first link in the polyester chain. US EIA.
Yarn
Producer prices and the fibre to yarn spread.
- US cotton spun yarns 82.3 index up 0.9% on the month, up 3.3% on the year. August 2026, preliminary. US BLS producer price index.
- US synthetic spun yarns 144.9 index unchanged on the month, up 1.8% on the year. August 2026, preliminary. US BLS producer price index.
- Spinning margin proxy 143.7 index Our own arithmetic, rebased to 100 in May 2022. Above 100 means yarn has held up better than raw cotton since then. It is not the margin of any mill. VeriMills, from two US BLS indexes.
Garments
Where finished orders are actually going.
- US apparel imports $74.7B Twelve months to July 2026, HS 61 and 62. Down 9.3% on the twelve months before. July 2026 alone: $6.86B, down 11.2% on July 2025. Largest suppliers: Vietnam, China, Bangladesh. UN Comtrade.
- Fastest rising line +5.3% YoY Women's synthetic fibre knit trousers and leggings, twelve months to June 2026 against the twelve before. UN Comtrade.
- Fastest falling line -22.3% YoY Women's man made fibre woven blouses and shirts, twelve months to June 2026 against the twelve before. UN Comtrade.
- EU retail order book -3.4 balance What EU retailers expect to order over the next three months. September 2026, down 2.5 on the month, against -4.0 a year ago. European Commission survey.
Home textiles
Bed, bath and floor, and what a piece fetches.
- US home textile imports $13.87B Bed, bath, table, window, filled bedding and floor coverings, 2025, down 12.2% on the year. Largest suppliers: China, India, Pakistan. UN Comtrade.
- Largest group $2.87B Bed linen, 2025, down 13.7% on the year. UN Comtrade.
- Cotton bed linen, a piece $4.84 a piece US customs value for 2025, down 10.2% on the year. That is the price at the foreign port, before freight, insurance and duty, so it sits close to an FOB price and not to a landed cost. A sheet set counts as its separate pieces, never as one set. UN Comtrade.
- Cotton terry towel, a piece $1.07 a piece US customs value for 2025, down 9.3% on the year. That is the price at the foreign port, before freight, insurance and duty, so it sits close to an FOB price and not to a landed cost. Bath, hand and face towels all sit in this heading, so the average blends the sizes. UN Comtrade.
- Steepest fall -19.1% YoY Blankets and throws, 2025, $1.51B. UN Comtrade.
- Pakistan share 10.9% of the tracked lines $1.40B across the 39 product lines followed here, 2025, unchanged on the year. China fell 26.8% over the same year. UN Comtrade.
Freight
What the sea leg adds on top.
- FBX global composite $3,357/FEU Up $13 against 9 October 2026. Reading of 16 October 2026. Freightos Baltic Index (FBX), Freightos. terminal.freightos.com
- CCFI composite 1922.64 points up 0.54% on the previous reading. Reading of 16 October 2026. China originating lanes only, so it is a proxy and not a South Asian rate. Shanghai Shipping Exchange.
Currency
The rates your supplier is invoicing against.
- USD/INR 94.96 down 1.77 on the week. Reference fix of 16 October 2026. European Central Bank.
- USD/CNY 6.6862 down 0.0059 on the week. Reference fix of 16 October 2026. European Central Bank.
- EUR/USD 1.1253 up 0.0047 on the week. Reference fix of 16 October 2026. European Central Bank.
- GBP/USD 1.3335 up 0.0115 on the week. Reference fix of 16 October 2026. European Central Bank.
Prefer it raw? The same summary is published as a plain text file you can forward anywhere, and every figure with its full history lives on the numbers page and the garment numbers page.
What is due next, and where to read more
Expected, not promised. A publisher can move a release around a holiday, and when one does the line here simply does not change until it lands. All times are Pakistan time.
When the next figures arrive
Read off the schedules that actually run this site, not typed in by hand.
- Weekday numbers Mon 19 Oct, 20:10 PKT Currencies, Shankar-6 and crude.
- Cotton Sat 24 Oct, 08:00 PKT The USDA weekly review and the US spot quote.
- Monthly tables Sat 14 Nov, 10:00 PKT WASDE, Cotlook, Comtrade and the BLS indexes.
Where to read more this week
Free to read, no subscription. We publish the link and never the article, so the story stays with the publisher who wrote it. Every one of these is listed with the rest of our reading on the sources page.
- Fibre2Fashion Fibre, yarn and fabric Their textile news feed. The fastest free read on what Asian mills are saying. www.fibre2fashion.com/news/textile-news (opens in a new tab)
- Apparel Resources Garment factories Orders, factory investment and buyer moves across South and South East Asia. apparelresources.com/top-news/business-news/ (opens in a new tab)
- Textile Today Bangladesh Inside Bangladeshi mills and factories, which set the price everyone else is compared against. www.textiletoday.com.bd/category/news-analysis-textile-apparel (opens in a new tab)
- Textile World United States An American view of yarns, fibres and processing, a counterweight to the Asian trade press. www.textileworld.com/category/textile-world/breaking-news/ (opens in a new tab)
- FashionUnited Retail and brands Retail and brand news, which is where a garment order is created long before it reaches a factory. fashionunited.com/news/business (opens in a new tab)
- USDA cotton market news Cotton prices The official US spot price and shipment reports, and the source of our own cotton card. www.ams.usda.gov/market-news/cotton (opens in a new tab)
Where these figures come from
Every figure above was read from one of these. Cotton Outlook, as printed in the USDA world market prices report. European Central Bank. European Commission survey. Freightos Baltic Index (FBX), Freightos.. Karachi Cotton Association official rate, read via KhiStocks. Shanghai Shipping Exchange. SunSirs, China Commodity Data Group. UN Comtrade. US BLS producer price index. US EIA. USDA. VeriMills, from two US BLS indexes. Zhengzhou Commodity Exchange.
World Bank commodity data is used under CC BY 4.0.
European Commission survey data is used under its reuse policy.
US federal figures are works of the United States government and are in the public domain under 17 U.S.C. 105.
Freightos FBX figures are reproduced with credit and a link, as the Freightos terms require.
UN Comtrade figures are United Nations data, shown under the UN reuse policy for small extracts.
The Zhengzhou Commodity Exchange settlements and the Karachi Cotton Association rate are quoted as credited facts; neither body publishes a licence, and neither table is reproduced.
Rebasing, unit conversion and the spinning margin proxy are our own computation and are not the output of any source named above.
Nothing here is an offer, a quotation, or advice to buy or sell.
Common questions
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Once a week, on a Monday, and nothing else is ever sent to that address.
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The week's fibre, yarn, garment, home textile, freight and currency figures, each naming its source and the date that source was last read, plus what is due to publish next. You do not have to take our word for that: this week's issue is printed on this page below the form.
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