By Keith Brown, DTN Contributing Cotton Analyst 

The market posted an early overnight range of 3.00-cents-plus, before trading up and down several times during the day. Cotton attempted to recover its recent losses, but the bulls lost control and prices fell even lower. The seesaw action in cotton somewhat mimicked the recovering trading of the outside markets such as the Dow Jones, crude il and gold.

Thursday morning, USDA will issue its latest export-sales information. Last week saw sales of nearly 200,000 bales, with China at the top buyer. Current season sales are running 62% of USDA’s projected target.

Some analysts are reporting that China’s Xinjiang crop is larger than expected. However, several western countries have banned cotton and other commodities from that region due to human rights violations. Still, the crop is large and China will use it in some way.

Traders are also aware of the heavily-long position held by certain speculators. Monday’s CFTC report indicated the managed-money funds are net long some 83,000-plus contracts. That level nearly exceeded their highest concentration of net long holdings since mid-2018. If cotton’s charts began to “our, those traders may elect to vacate, which could result in more selling.

Wednesday, December settled at 109.39 cents, down 2.26 cents, March ended at 104.19 cents, down 2.22 cents and December 2022 ended at 86.40 cents, 0.31 cent lower; estimated volume was 51,405 contracts.