Keith Brown DTN Contributing Cotton Analyst    

The cotton market ended at limit down Thursday as speculators began to exit previous long positions and adding short positions. At the center of the sell-off is the news of COVID-19 lockdowns being forced in China, as well as fears the global recession will intensify into the latter half of 2022 and into 2023. Another negative has to be USDA's inability to report weekly export sales.                                        

A couple of weeks ago, USDA moved its reporting service to a new internet platform, but it was a complete flop. Now, the agency says it may resurrect its old platform and will supposedly issue "catch-up" data on Sept. 15.          

Traders are also awaiting USDA's next WASDE report, which is scheduled for Sept. 12. They want confirmation of the huge reduction seen on the August data. At that time, tabulators slashed nearly three million bales off the 2022 crop.    

Friday afternoon, the CFTC will issue its weekly commitment of traders report. Last week saw that the managed-money funds had bought roughly 6,000 contracts, upping their now net-long position to 51,000 contracts. For context, their greatest concentration of long positions was about 90,000-plus contracts earlier in the year.    

Weather-wise, the one- to five-day forecast calls for moderate to heavy rainfall across Texas, the Delta and the Southeast. The six- to 10-day and the eight- to 14-day outlooks indicate above normal chances of rain for much of the cotton belt.    

For Thursday, December closed at 108.21 cents, down 5.00 cents, March 2023 finished at 105.14 cents, down 5.00 cents and July 2023 settled at 97.77 cents, 4.77 cents lower; estimated volume was 19,968 contracts.    

Keith Brown can be reached at commodityconsults@gmail.com 

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