By Keith Brown, DTN Contributing Cotton Analyst 

The cotton market finished fractionally higher Thursday as USDA reported stupendous sales to China. Earlier in the morning, subscribers were presented the entire USDA data, which showed some 435,000 sold for this crop year and 148,000 bales for the new crop.

Combined, last week the U.S. sold right at 600,000 bales. Unfortunately, the market somewhat sputtered on the news as anticipation to see hefty Chinese business had been running high. Thus, some of the bloom of such huge sales news had already worn off.

The July market enters the end of the week and first day of the new calendar month in a positive state. That is, July is up 1.70 cents on the week, up 6.48 cents for the month of April, but still down 13.50 cents down on the year. Yet, even the latter number has been curtailed by the market’s most recent ride.

The U.S. dollar nearly posted a new monthly low Thursday. Its April low was 98.81 cents, which fell on April 14, but Thursday’s currency trade grazed that low at 98.83 cents. Thus, Friday, being the first day of calendar May, might draw in additional selling in the dollar as Federal Reserve’s monetary policy of near zero interest rates continues to create downward pressure.

July cotton closed at 57.33 cents, up 0.21 cent, December ended at 58.92 cents, up 0.24 cent and March finished 59.60 cents, up 0.17 cent. Estimated volume was 23,707 contracts.