Keith Brown DTN Contributing Cotton Analyst    

After posting new overnight lows for this super-bearish move, cotton ended moderately down Wednesday. The market drew some support from certain outside markets. That is, the grains, the energies and the stock markets were thankfully higher despite the 9.1% CPI reading from earlier this morning. As it stands, the U.S. is suffering from the highest inflation level in 41 years. Another interesting anomaly was that the U.S. Dollar Index traded lower.    

Thursday morning, USDA will issue its weekly export-sales report. The thing to watch is to see whether China cancels new crop purchases. With its recent COVID-19 lockdowns, some traders think Chinese demand for U.S. cotton is waning.    

Crude was higher Wednesday, despite a hike in U.S. oil inventories and a big inflation number that will collectively push the Federal Reserve to aggressively hike interest rate. Traders have been selling oil of late on worries that rate hikes to stem inflation will slow economic growth and hurt demand. Prices fell by more than 7% on Tuesday in volatile trade to settle below $100 for the first time since April. However, the physical or cash markets remains tight, with some grades of oil selling premium to the futures.    

For Wednesday, December closed at 87.71 cents, down 3.13 cents, March 2023 finished at 83.83 cents, down 2.85 cents and July 2023 settled at 79.78 cents, off 2.72 cents; estimated volume was 33,825 contracts.    

Keith Brown can be reached at commodityconsults@gmail.com 

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