By Keith Brown DTN Cotton Correspondent
The cotton market finished higher Tuesday as speculators following the lead of several popular technical indicators. Moving averages, stochastics, RSI and other technical indicators have been giving off buy signals since the Market bottomed about Valentine’s Day. In fact, Tuesday May cotton hurdled its January high of 76.14 cents, but failed to close over it. Nonetheless, a new high for 2019 was established.
While the U.S./China trade talks are ongoing, the market is growing weary over the amount of time being expended. News accounts are now indicating the potential for a June signing ceremony, which ironically will be the one-year anniversary of the implementation of the traffics. Cotton was above 90-cents in June of 2018, when the U.S. placed import taxes on Chinese goods.
From that moment U.S. markets, especially agriculture, have immensely suffered. A new California study out this week suggests when all the gains are added and all the losses are subtracted, the U.S. economy has lost some 7.5 billion dollars. Of course, mathematics can be bent to make one’s point.
The market is anticipating another bullish export-sales report on Thursday. Of course, what would make this report supportive would be for China again to come in as the largest buyer of old crop cotton. To reiterate, such a sight would give a psychological boost to the trade.
Tuesday May cotton settled at 75.65 cents, up 0.38 cent, July closed at 76.72 cents, up 0.31 cent and December finished at 74.90 cents, up 0.20 cent. Tuesday’s estimated volume was 33,000 contracts.
