By Keith Brown DTN Cotton Correspondent
The cotton market ended Wednesday higher, but only fractionally so. Wednesday’s higher close came as a result of the market becoming short-term oversold. From its Sunday night opening, the market had plunged some 2.80 cents lower. The impetus to break centered on several market fronts, including the potential government shutdown Friday, concerns over the U.S./China trade talks and early ideas the 2019 crop will be huge. However, as always there are bullish flip sides to those bearish sounding nuances.
On Thursday USDA will release another round of delayed exports-sales reports. Thursday’s data will reflect the week ending January 3. A combined report encompassing the periods between January 10 to February 14 will be issued the week of February 22. At that point, USDA will be caught-up on all delayed reports and will resume a normal reporting schedule the week of February 22. Hopefully, Thursday’s data will be supportive to the market. Subscribers might recall China was a net buyer of U.S. old crop bales last week.
There will be no DTN cotton market commentary Thursday, as we will be traveling to speak to the Virginia Cotton Growers Association. We shall resume normal updates Friday morning.
Settlements Wednesday included March cotton at 69.86 cents, up 0.08 cent, July cotton was 72.74 cents, up 0.30 cent, December cotton went out at 72.62 cents up 0.25 cent. Thursday’s estimated volume was 65,000 contracts traded.
