By Keith Brown, DTN Contributing Cotton Analyst 

The cotton market was able to halt its bearish bleeding and rally higher Wednesday. Although traders may be anticipating a strong export-sales report Thursday, the strength of the trend also encouraged some recovery. Of course, shipments are being somewhat restricted by the supply-chain crisis, yet the market would still like to see a strong sales amount, with China as a dominant buyer.

Traders are keenly aware that spot December enters its notice period in 13 trading days. Thus, there continues to be a decent level of rolling from December into March. To that end, it is reported that deliverable stocks are under 30,000 bales.

The Federal Reserve announced Wednesday it will soon begin reducing the pace of its monthly bond purchases, the first step towards pulling back on the massive amount of help it had been providing markets and the economy. According to the statement, tapering of bond purchases will start “later this month.” The process will see reductions of $15 billion each month — $10 billion in treasuries and $5 billion in mortgage-backed securities — from the current $120 billion a month that the fed is buying.

For Wednesday, December settled at 118.82 cents, up 1.57 cents, March ended at 115.44 cents, plus 1.61 cents and December 2022 ended at 92.60 cents, 0.44 cent higher; estimated volume was 51,606 contracts.