By Keith Brown, DTN Contributing Cotton Analyst 

The cotton market was measurably higher Thursday as USDA reported very strong sales. For last week, old crop sales were 370,000, with China taking some 217,000 bales.

For the new crop, sales were 55,00 bales. Weekly exports were 370,000, which was higher than last week’s shipment number. Thus, the market shot some 2.00 cents higher on the day, before paring those gains to close about 0.80 cent up.

Friday, the Labor Department will release its April jobs report. It is expected that report will show historically high numbers, surpassing the job losses seen in the Great Depression era.

After a full month of quarantine, the employment figures are expected to show some 22 million jobs were lost, while the unemployment rate is seen jumping to 14% from 4.4%. However, some analysts are speculating that such a rate could be closer to 20%.

Ever since its massive peak of 104 in late March, the U.S. dollar has been moving sideways. Of course, COVID-19 has long undone the usual correlations, thus it is hard to know how the world’s currency markets will react as the world attempts to move past the virus and the economic devastation left in its wake.

Overall, the dollar has been trading stronger against the basket of world currencies, and to that point, we did see where the Turkish lira posted all-time lows Thursday. Turkey is a major cotton importer.

July cotton closed at 55.39 cents, up 0.88 cent, December finished at 56.95 cents, up 0.72 cent and March closed at 57.87 cents, up 0.70 cent. Estimated volume was 28,358 contracts.