With a much calmer Dow Jones and related financial markets, the cotton market finished Friday with a “win.” However, the bullish “win” was done on low volume, as Friday’s estimated volume was 12,500 contracts. For the week, March cotton was off 0.99 cent, while year-to-date, it is down 1.68 cents. That sounds like a lot of weeping and gnashing of teeth for that little bit of trading activity. Still, there is bound to be some end-of-the-year position squaring on Monday, ahead of the New Year’s holiday.

We understand that U.S. and Chinese trade negotiators will meet face-to-face in January. Of late, there has been several phone conference calls between the two nations and it is thought some progress is being made. China has agreed to lift tariffs on U.S. autos starting January 1 and supposedly has developed a “wish list” of other U.S. manufacturing and agricultural products.

Monday, will see normal trading hours for ICE cotton, although portions of the U.S. government will remain closed.

March cotton settled 72.19 cents, up 0.13 cent, July was 74.52 cents, up 0.24 cent and December closed at 73.23 cents, up 0.18 cent.