By Keith Brown DTN Cotton Correspondent 

The cotton market finished higher Tuesday as recovering Chinese financial markets inspired European and U.S. financial markets to trade positively. That bullish encouragement spilled over into the U.S. agricultural markets, resulting in their positive closes.

To that point, earlier in the day cotton traded into triple-digit levels on massive volume, but heading into the close prices did come off a tad. Still, it seemed the big volume came more on to the upside.

There were rumors circulating Tuesday indicating China may postpone its purchases under the phase-one trade agreement. It was suggested the coronavirus might cause the closure of some Chinese ports. However, there has been no official confirmation from Beijing regarding this potentiality. At last glance, China was the biggest buyer of U.S. cotton on last week’s exports-sales report.

Open interest remains at its highest level since November 2018. Generally speaking, speculators who were net short for most of 2019, reversed course last year, and now are net long. However, to keep that stance, cotton prices must recover and then proceed to post higher highs, above the January peak. Failure to do so in the near future could result in a severe price adjustment.

Tuesday, March cotton closed at 67.35 cents, up 0.51 cent, July settled at 68.88 cents, up 0.66 cent and December finished at 68.62 cent, up 0.91 cent. Estimated volume was a stunning 69,131 contracts.