By Keith Brown DTN Cotton Correspondent 

The cotton market finished slightly lower amid positive sales and exports numbers versus the winding down of the spot December contract. Weekly sales, although not a marketing-year-high as last week’s data showed, were, nonetheless, above 227,000 contracts.

The latter point relates to the necessary melt in spot December’s open interest. Thursday morning that amour was less than 8,000 contracts, so there were a lot of straight fixations and/or rolls to the March or other deferred months.

Looking into next week, USDA is likely to show the 2019 harvest to be above 75% gathered. This crop milestone may bring the market closer to its tradition low that typically comes about Thanksgiving.

Additionally, next week’s sales and exports data will appear Friday, because of the holiday. However, if another round of stout numbers appear, the market ought to sit up, take notice, and began to doubt the government’s supply and demand numbers.

For Thursday, December cotton settled 61.84 cents, down 0.40 cent, March ended 64.01 cents, down 0.27 cent and December 2020 finished at 66.56 cents, down 0.43 cent; volume was 41,401 contracts.