By Keith Brown, DTN Contributing Cotton Analyst 

The cotton market closed markedly higher Friday as traders viewed the all-time high stock markets and the falling U.S. dollar as bullish forces. Also, rising crude oil prices may have supported cotton prices. Of late, the market has been in a two-sided struggle between improving foreign demand (weaker dollar?) and the fear of another wave of COVID-19. To the latter, there is more talk of mandated shutdowns across the country, into next winter.

Next week, USDA will release its latest update on the supply-demand situation for cotton. In the October WASDE report, government tabulators had domestic carryout at 7.20 million bales while world carry was pegged at 101.44 million bales. Since that time, there has been wide-spread disagreement among producers with those numbers. That report comes out at on Dec. 10.

Cumulative sales for 2020-21 have reached 9.866 million bales, down from 10.403 last year, but the second highest since 2010-11. Sales have reached 73% of the USDA’s forecast for the 2020-21 marketing year versus a five-year average of 62%. The largest buyer this week was China at 130,111 bales, followed by Vietnam at 61,423 and Pakistan at 44,517. This was China’s largest weekly purchase since September 10 when they bought 444,060 bales. China has the most commitments for 2020-21 at 3.552 million bales, followed by Vietnam at 1.724 million and Pakistan at 832,000.

March cotton finished down 1.67 cents for the week, down 0.58 cent for the month, but up 0.77 cent for the year.

For Friday, March cotton closed at 71.57 cents, up 0.46 cent, July settled at 73.21 cents, up 0.45 cent and December 2021 ended at 70.69 cents, 0.41 cent higher. Estimated volume was 21,300 contracts.