Keith Brown DTN Contributing Cotton Analyst    

The cotton market was sharply higher Thursday as supply concerns remain a major underlying situation for traders. Besides the big losses in the U.S. crop, Pakistan indicates it will need to import about a million bales to make up for the reduction caused by it recent floods event. Additionally, India's crop is falling due to heavy rains and pest infestation.    

Thursday, the ECB raised its interest rates for the Eurozone by three-quarters of one point. The tightening move comes a couple of weeks before the Federal Reserve is expected to hike the U.S. rate as much. In a speech at the Cato Institute, Fed Chair Powell vowed to fight inflation "until the job is done." His comments sent the U.S. dollar higher.    

This Monday, USDA will issue its supply-demand update for September. Despite its surprisingly huge deduction posted in the August crop report, some traders and analysts are expecting an increase in the size of the crop. Those increases range for 500,000 to 1.2 million bales.    

Friday, the CFTC will publish its commitment of traders report. Last week saw that managed-money funds had increased their long position to 53,800 net contracts.    

For Friday, December closed at 103.84 cents, up 2.22 cents, March 2023 finished at 100.75 cents, up 2.20 cents and July 2023 settled at 95.47 cents, 1.81 cents higher; estimated volume was 22,131 contracts.    

Keith Brown can be reached at commodityconsults@gmail.com 

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