By ShayLe Stewart, DTN Livestock Analyst 

The cotton market opened this Thanksgiving week sharply higher and was able to maintain those lofty levels into Monday’s close. The drivers for the bullish move included yet another COVID-19 vaccine success, strong grain markets and a technical resumption of the trend. Monday morning AstraZeneca announced it too had developed a viable COVID vaccine and that news sent the Dow Jones sharply higher.

In addition, South American weather continues to be essentially dry and that rallied the Chicago grains again. Lastly, the obvious technical uptrend, which is about to be eight months old, continues to draw in new speculative buyers.

Monday afternoon USDA will update its crop progress numbers. Last week, the crop was pegged at 69% gathered, plus all of last week showed great harvesting conditions.

The market will be closed Thursday in observance of Thanksgiving. Additionally, Friday’s cotton session will be an abbreviated one, opening at 8:00 a.m. and closing at 1:30 p.m. Eastern. However, that morning, USDA will issue its delayed export sales data. Sales last week were 131,000, with shipments of 277,000. Both numbers were considered weak.

Lastly, spot December cotton remains in its notice period. Monday there were 166 notices tendered. December Cotton expires on Dec. 8.

Monday, March cotton closed at 73.80 cents, up 0.84 cent, July 2021 settled at 75.24 cents, up 0.84 cent and December 2021 ended at 71.50 cents, 0.93 cent higher. Estimated volume was 30,089 contracts.