By Keith Brown DTN Cotton Correspondent 

Cotton finished slightly higher Thursday as strong exports-sales from Thursday morning help buoy the market. Although Thursday’s sales were off 4% from last week, but last week was a marketing-year-high number and that is always a hard act to follow.

Yet, the most bullish part in Thursday’s report was the seasonal high shipment numbers. Of course, winter is considered “shipping season”, nonetheless Thursday’s export numbers were outstanding, with China taking a large slice.

Friday, spot March has its option expiration moment. The result of what amount of calls and puts are exercised have on total open interest, which is the largest since October 2018, will be seen in the ICE’s data on Monday. As it stands there is a fair amount of 70-strike calls and higher, which seem destined for zero.

As the market enters the last day of the week, its current net change from last Friday stands a plus 0.41 cent, which sounds incredible given the volatility the Wuhan virus caused over all the global marketplace. However, next week, the market will face new supply-demand data, fresh exports-sales and the National Council with its membership revelation on 2020 acres on Saturday.

For Thursday, March cotton settled at 67.91 cents, up 0.40 cent, July ended at 69.31 cents, up 0.36 cent and December closed at 69.12 cents, up 0.35 cent. Thursday’s estimated volume was 56,756 contracts.