By Keith Brown. DTN Cotton Correspondent 

The cotton market was sharply higher Thursday, driven by a host of fundamental and technical positives. Initially, the market saw a marketing-year-high shipment number, which simply means the available amount of physical cotton in the U.S. is becoming greatly reduced.

Another strength was the surging corn and bean markets. This week, it was obvious speculators were shifting their focus from the old crop to the new crop as both December corn and November beans traded superior to the other futures months.

Lastly was cotton’s return to the upward technical trend. After suffering a decline from its late April high, the market is now recouping some of that lost ground as speculators are returning to the long side.

Friday morning, traders across many markets will finally see the long-anticipated monthly jobs report. Street talk has it that the U.S. economy may have added some 900,000-plus jobs last month.

May Cotton expired Thursday at 89.48 cents. Originally, the May contract commenced on June 18 at 76.60 cents. Ultimately, it collapsed to a COVID-19 low of 52.80 cents in April 2020, and then shot to a February 2021 high of 95.60 cents.

As the market heads into its Friday session, we note that July cotton is 2.50 cents up on the week, 2.50 cents on the month and up 11.41 cents on the year.

Thursday, July cotton closed at 90.58 cents, up 3.25 cents, December settled at 86.72 cents, up 1.32 cents and March 2022 ended at 85.82 cents, 1.14 cents higher; estimated volume was 25,404 contracts.