By Keith Brown, DTN Contributing Cotton Analyst 

Cotton finished with triple-digit gains as a weak U.S. dollar, a strong Dow Jones and speculator buying reinvigorated the bullish trend. Although Wednesday’s volume was not extravagant, it did exceed Tuesday’s participation. Traders, of all stripes, are adjusting their positions in preparation for the end-of-the-year settlement.

Thursday, USDA will issue its last export-sales report for the calendar year of 2021. As it stands, current season sales are running behind last year’s pace, but are above the five-year average.

Looking into 2022, many of the 2021 unresolved fundamentals will carry over. Those situations include Omicron, Taiwan, the supply-chain crisis, and high new crop production costs, to name a few. Of course, there is always the fear that an unexpected Black Swan event could emerge to rattle the general marketplace.

Wednesday, March cotton settled at 112.99 cents, up 2.94 cents, July ended at 107.32 cents, up 2.01 cents and December ended at 91.65 cents, 0.35 cent higher; estimated volume was 22,761 contracts.