Fibre prices

What this is Three lines with dates. Cotton: USDA’s daily average spot quotation for base quality upland cotton across the seven US markets, in US cents per pound, with the nearby ICE futures settlement beside it, one point per trading day since 1 August 2025. Crude: the EIA’s daily WTI close in dollars per barrel, five years. Below them, the Cotlook A Index as a monthly average, five years, because the daily index is a paid product.

How to read it Each chart runs from its oldest day on the left to its newest on the right. Touch or point anywhere and the exact figures for that day appear; the small key under each chart gives the change over the whole window. On the cotton chart the spot line normally sits a few cents under the futures line: that gap is the basis, the discount USDA’s markets quote against the exchange. The three charts use different units, so compare shapes and timing, never the heights of the lines.

What moves it Cotton follows world availability: crops, ending stocks and demand, with the futures market reacting first and the spot quotation following the same day at a basis. Crude follows OPEC decisions, inventories and the world economy, and reaches a polyester quotation through PX and PTA with a lag of roughly one to three months.

How to use it Scale and timing, now to the day. A supplier who says cotton jumped this week can be checked against the actual days. If a polyester increase is blamed on raw material, the oil chart shows whether crude moved, and when, without waiting for a month end average.

The trap The US spot price is not the world price a Pakistani or Indian mill pays; it is the cleanest daily public series, and the world benchmark is the monthly Cotlook line below it. The ICE figure is the previous session’s settlement as USDA printed it, not a live quote. Daily lines look more violent than monthly ones: a two cent day is normal, a two cent month is news.

What this is United States producer price indexes for the series in the key, each rebased to 100 at the start of the window so they can be read against one another on a single scale.

How to read it Every line starts together at 100 on the left edge, so the chart answers one question: which input has climbed furthest since then. A line at 110 has risen ten per cent over the window, one at 95 has fallen five, and where two lines pull apart their costs have genuinely diverged. The list under the chart gives each series' latest published level and its change over the past year; those raw levels sit on different base years, so never compare or divide them directly.

What moves it The cost of the fibre underneath, energy, and how much pricing power the mills in that category currently have.

How to use it Checking a supplier story over months, not weeks. When a mill says the market moved, this shows the direction and rough size of the move in that family of yarn in the United States. Where a series is flagged as slow moving above, do not read a flat line as proof that nothing moved.

The trap These are index numbers for United States producers, not price levels and not your supplier country. They tell you the shape and size of a move, never what anything costs. The rebasing to 100 is our arithmetic and not the statistics office.

What this is Twelve months of Indian import unit values for polyester staple and textured yarn in dollars per kilo, and the same chain priced in India against the United States, with the Chinese spot assessment for staple fibre, with the Chinese exchange settlements for the polyester contracts.

How to read it Four displays. The chart tracks two finished polyester products over the last twelve months in dollars per kilo, oldest month on the left. The bar ladder runs down the production chain, from oil based feedstock at the top to finished fibres and yarns below; each step carries one bar per country on the same scale, so the longer bar is the dearer market for that step. The boxes headed cash against the curve are the two prices for the same fibre side by side: the spot price the physical market paid, the most traded futures month beside it, and the gap between them, all in yuan per tonne. In the futures table each row is one product, and the price to read is the most traded month's settlement, in yuan per tonne with our rough dollars per kilo conversion beside it.

What moves it Crude oil through paraxylene, then the balance of new polyester capacity against demand. China sets the Asian level, so the Chinese futures curve leads the region when we can read it.

How to use it The blend decision. When cotton runs away from polyester the economics of next season blend ratio change, and this is where you can see by how much.

The trap A customs unit value is the average of everything that cleared that month across every grade and origin, and it arrives about two months late. It is not a quotation, and no mill will sell you at it.