Keith Brown DTN Contributing Cotton Analyst    

In an attempt to alleviate its "oversold condition," the cotton market finished higher Friday. Earlier in the session, the market was moderately lower, as the monthly jobs data essentially proved friendly to the U.S. dollar and unfriendly to the Dow Jones and other financial markets. Also, to some extent, part of Friday's strength may have been related to the fact that spot October cotton expires Friday.    

Friday afternoon, the CFTC will publish its latest breakdown of market participants. with emphasis on the closely-watched managed-money funds. At last count, those funds were some 41,000 contracts net long. At their 2022 Spring Peak they were over 90,000 contracts net long.    

Monday is Columbus Day, thus the federal government will be closed, but most markets, including cotton, will trade. As a result, the crop progress data will be delayed until Tuesday, and weekly export-sales are pushed back to Friday. However, on Wednesday, USDA will issue its October WASDE, while the Commerce Department will publish its PPI number. Then on Thursday, they will publish its CPI (inflation) numbers.    

Closing out Friday, December cotton finished down 1.11 cents for the week and the month, and down 8.42 cents for the month.     

For Friday, December closed at 84.23 cents, up 1.33 cents, March 2023 finished at 82.66 cents, down 1.22 cents and July 2023 settled at 79.23 cents, 1.19 cents higher; estimated volume was 31,071 contracts.    

Keith Brown can be reached at commodityconsults@gmail.com 

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