Keith Brown DTN Contributing Cotton Analyst    

The cotton market saw a weird finish Thursday as old crop July was materially higher, while new crop December was lower. Spot July was encouraged to trade up based on a recovering Dow, a declining U.S. dollar and fresh Mill fixation-type buying. Earlier in the day, the market had seen ho-hum export sales.    

Crude oil rebounded from earlier losses in a bullish session, as Chinese officials planned to ease restrictions in Shanghai. Such action could further tighten global energy supply. The crude benchmarks of Brent and WTI, continued their spate of wild swings, with both rising nearly five dollars a barrel in the span of a few hours.    

From a weekend weather summary, West Texas cotton fields will see some needed rain Monday through Wednesday of next week. Amounts could total one-half to a full inch across some dryland areas.    

Heading into Friday's session, July cotton is up on the week by some 2.50 cents, up on the month, 2.07 cents and higher on the year by 39.82 cents.    

For today, July cotton settled at 147.70 cents, up 3.23 cents, December closed at 18.20 cents, down 0.96 cent and March 2023 finished at 123.93 cents, 0.48 cent lower; estimated volume was 40,159 contracts.    

Keith Brown can be reached at commodityconsults@gmail.com 

(c) Copyright 2022 DTN, LLC. All rights reserved.