By Keith Brown, DTN Contributing Cotton Analyst 

The cotton market sustained triple-digit losses Thursday amid poor export sales, a weaker Dow Jones and a slightly overbought situation. Volume was moderate. From its omicron low of 102.50 cents, spot March has raced some 17.00 cents higher, with very few corrections along the way.

Some traders have expressed that a retreat of some measure would actually be healthy to the overall trend. This week alone the market has swelled some 2% in value.

Friday morning, the Labor Department will issue its monthly jobs data for December. The current estimate is for non-farm payrolls to increase by some 400,000 jobs. The prior month, that is November, saw the jobs at 210,000, well under expectations.

Also Friday, the CFTC will report on the status of traders via its weekly commitment of traders data. Last week’s release, which had been delayed till this past Monday indicated that the managed-money funds were on the buying upswing. Their last reported position was 74,825 contracts net long.

Thursday, March cotton settled at 114,72 cents, down 1.56 cents, July ended at 109.41 cents, down 1.03 cents and December finished at 93.99 cents, 0.31 cent lower; estimated volume was 23,873 contracts.