By Keith Brown, DTN Contributing Cotton Analyst 

The cotton market extended its bullish push Monday as the ICE futures all posted life-of-contract highs. Old crop cotton made its eighth consecutive higher weekly close last Friday and seems to be gunning for even higher levels. Supporting the move is the well-defined uptrend.

That flow is encouraging the mills to buy-in their short cash obligations, while certain speculators are wading in long as well. An additional peripheral fundamental supporting cotton was the weaker U.S. dollar. Of late, the dollar experienced a serious jump due to the changes in the Fed’s monetary policy.

The various stock markets were moderately higher Monday. Overall, the price of stocks bounced for a second day as investors were glad to get a bearish January behind them. Yet, even with a two-day rally, the S&P posted its worst month since the onset of the pandemic in March 2020.

Numerically, the S&P 500 rose 1.1% Monday, cutting its monthly loss to 5.99%. That’s still its worst month since the 12.5% loss in March 2020 and its worst January since 2009.

Looking ahead this week, the market will see weekly energy inventories from the DOE on Wednesday, exports-sales on Thursday and the big jobs report on Friday.

Monday, March cotton settled at 127.57 cents, up 3.81 cents, July ended at 119.66 cents, up 1.79 cents and December finished at 100.87 cents, 1.14 cents higher; estimated volume was 43,385 contracts.