By Keith Brown, DTN Contributing Cotton Analyst 

The cotton market was higher as Friday was driven not only by its own positive fundamentals, but also of those other markets such as the grains. To that end, Thursday’s corn exports number was reputedly to be the highest on record. At any rate, cotton finished moderately higher.

Next week ushers in a new trading month, and thus a new supply-demand number. USDA will release its latest update on Feb. 9th. Traders are anticipating an increase in domestic exports, and thus a decrease in domestic ending stocks.

Friday afternoon the CFTC will issue its market structure information, detailing the positions of speculators and commercial hedgers. Of course, by virtue of their business models, commercials are “typically” short, thus pressure on the market often correlates with what size positions, bullish or bearish, are held by speculators. Over the last two week’s certain speculators have been gingerly liquidating their net long holdings.

Into next week beside the regular weekly export sales on Thursday, the Labor Department will issue its unemployment report (jobs), the first for the Biden Administration.

For the week, spot March cotton was down 0.92 cent on the week, but up 2.52 cents for the month and year.

For Friday, March cotton closed at 80.64 cents, up 0.71 cent, July settled at 82.78 cents, up 0.72 cent and December cotton ended at 77.69 cents, up 0.19 cent; estimated volume was 31,496 contracts.