By Keith Brown, DTN Contributing Cotton Analyst 

The cotton market was moderately lower Thursday as traders keyed on the rising U.S. dollar versus Thursday morning’s superior export sales for cotton. The Greenback was driven higher by the notion the Federal Reserve has switched gears regarding easy monetary policy, and it posted life-of-contract highs. In addition, the dollar is seeing flight-to-quality type buying over the Russian/Ukrainian situation.

Friday, the CFTC will update its weekly commitment of traders data. Last count had the managed-money funds roughly 77,000 contracts net long, but the cutoff date for compiling the data was this past Tuesday

The Commerce Department issued its Gross Domestic Product number Thursday, and it showed an improvement of 6.9% on annualized pace in the fourth quarter. That was well ahead of the 5.5% estimate. Consumer activity and business spending led the gains, which propelled the U.S. economy to its strongest full year since 1984. Jobless claims remained elevated at 260,000, while orders for durable goods are at their lowest point since April 2020.

Thursday, March cotton settled at 121.63 cents, down 0.70 cent, July ended at 116.51 cents, down 0.41 cent and December finished at 98.83 cents, 0.54 cent lower; estimated volume was 23,066 contracts.