By Keith Brown, DTN Contributing Cotton Analyst

The cotton market was lower Thursday as part of a slow day across all markets. Even the Dow Jones, which has been on volatile tirade, was engaged in a muted trade. Thursday morning the market saw a small uptick in the applications for unemployment insurance, which was a substantial 11.50 million, but testimony from Fed Chair Powell essentially indicated the central bank will backstop the economy, which seemed to calm a lot of the trading arenas. Specific to cotton’s trade was Thursday’s export sales. Although business was nowhere close to last week, shipments were superior to last week, which the market took as a stabilizing factor.

Weather forecasts for the Texas Panhandle still show a slightly better than a 50% chance for rainfall. That area has entered drought conditions, so obviously a meaningful rain would allow that crop to dramatically improve.

As the December Market enters into Friday, it stands at plus 0.49 cent for the week, up 2.04 cents for the month, but still down 10.84 cents for the year.

For Thursday, July cotton ended at 61.17 cents, down 0.17 cent, December finished at 59.52 cents, down 0.48 cent and March settled at 60.22 cents, down 0.31 cent. Estimated volume was 26,148 contracts traded.