Keith Brown DTN Contributing Cotton Analyst    

The cotton market opened and remained higher throughout the length of its Friday's session. Traders were essentially buoyed by a weaker U.S. dollar, technical buying and a fairly stable Dow Jones.    

Thursday's softer-than-expected CPI report did bearishly break the U.S. dollar. Some traders are now thinking the Federal Reserve's fight with inflation may have reached a serious inflection point, although some board governors are signaling that additional rate hikes are forthcoming.    

From the slightly disappointing weekly export sales of Thursday, we note, cumulative sales for 2022-23 have reached 8.776 million bales, which is higher than the 8.637 million from the 2021-22 season. The five-year average is 9.006 million. Sales stand at 73% of USDA's marketing year forecast versus a five-year average of 63%.    

The commitment of traders report will be issued this Monday, given today is the federal holiday for Veterans. At last count the managed-money funds roughly stood at 5,000 contracts net long.    

Lastly, spot December's option expires on the close Friday.    

For the week, December cotton rose 1.27 cents, for the month it is up 16.20 cents, but for the year it is off some 4.45 cents.    

For Friday, December closed at 88.20 cents, up 1.82 cents, March 2023 finished at 86.33 cents, up 1.77 cents and July 2023 settled at 84.87 cents, 1.53 cents higher; estimated volume was 53,883 contracts.    

Keith Brown can be reached at commodityconsults@gmail.com 

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