By Keith Brown, DTN Contributing Cotton Analyst 

The cotton market was able to maintain its gains of the past few days by closing fractionally higher Wednesday. Traders are waiting on Thursday’s export-sales report for any sort of directional influence. Already this week, the market is up 1.60-plus cents.

As expected, the Fed held benchmark interest rates near zero following the conclusion of its two-day meeting. It would continue to buy at least $120 billion of bonds each month “until substantial further progress has been made toward the Committee’s maximum employment and price stability goals,” the post-meeting statement said. The U.S. Dollar Index slightly elevated after the announcement.

Thursday, USDA will issue its weekly export-sales report. Seasonal sales have been running ahead of USDA’s original forecast by several percentage points, and with a weaker dollar along with the vaccines, strong demand for U.S. cotton is apt to increase over time.

For Wednesday, March cotton closed at 75.65 cents, up 0.06 cent, July settled at 77.11 cents, up 0.11 cent and December cotton ended at 73.34 cents, up 0.07 cent; estimated volume was 20,072 contracts.