Keith Brown DTN Contributing Cotton Analyst    

Cotton traded from an early low to a late session high, before ending moderately up. Early on with weaker outsider markets and a buoyant US Dollar, the market fell nearly one hundred points, but as the day wore on those outside markets pared their losses and cotton responded positively.     

Tomorrow at 8:30am, USDA will issue its weekly-exports sales. With China being on holiday, traders are not anticipating any sort of strong sales numbers. With that, cumulative export sales have reached 9.068 million bales, which is down from 11.267 million bales last year and the lowest for this point in the season since 2016/2017. Sales have reached 75% of the USDA forecast for the entire year as compared with the five-year average for this time of the year at 80%.    

The US Dollar was slightly lower against a basket of currencies. Traders were hesitant to make any big bets ahead of next week's central bank meetings, including the Federal Reserve and the European Central Bank. Traders broadly expect the Fed to increase rates by 25 basis points (bps) next Wednesday, a step down from a 50 bps increase in December. Meanwhile, the ECB has all but committed to raising its key rate by half a percentage point next week.    

Today, March 23 finished at 86.66, plus 42, July settled at 87.71, up 48, and December 23 ended at 85.53, 40 higher.  Today's estimated volume was 28,784 contracts.    Keith Brown can be reached at commodityconsults@gmail.com (c) Copyright 2023 DTN, LLC. All rights reserved.