The cotton market finished moderately higher as its oversold condition, plus Thursday morning’s strong export-sales data, sent prices higher. At one point, the market was triple-digits higher, but as the day wore, the futures mitigated their gains. At fault was a sharply lower Dow Jones and continued China trade war fears.

Also Thursday, USDA released its long-awaited tariff aid package, via the Marketing Facilitation Program, for those farmers hurt by the trade war. To us, the announcement had confusing elements, while actual details were not clearly apparent. Thus, the market, as well as the grains, sold off. However, Thursday afternoon President Trump is set to address the nation’s farmers in a televised broadcast

Weather continues to be a key fundamental to watch. The Southeast will be hugely hot and dry for the next 10 days. To that end, much of the cotton belt will see above normal temperatures and below normal rainfall for the six- to 10-day forecast.

The market will see a three-day weekend as this weekend marks Memorial Day Holiday. That means USDA’s weekly crop process will be released on Tuesday and its weekly sales and exports will be issued next Friday morning.

July cotton settled at 67.48 cents, up 0.73 cent, December finished at 66.83 cents, up 0.65 cent and March was at 67.56 cents, some 0.55 cent higher. Thursday’s estimated volume was 28,800 contracts traded.