By Keith Brown, DTN Contributing Cotton Analyst 

After scaling near 10-year-price highs this week, the cotton market witnessed a bit of profit taking this Friday. By most technical measurements, the market is overbought with the speculative funds thought to be more than excessively net-long. Volume this week has been huge. However, none of the above market conditions constitute any sort of an automatic sell signal. Friday afternoon the CFTC will update its commitment of traders data. It will be interesting to see how loaded long, or not, the managed funds are.

Monday is Columbus Day meaning the U.S. government will be closed, but not the ICE cotton futures. By virtue of its holiday closure, all federal marketing reports will be pushed forward by one day. Thus, crop progress/condition information will happen on Tuesday afternoon and the weekly exports-sales will come out on Friday. However, USDA will issue, as scheduled, its latest supply-demand update on Tuesday. This advisory will publish industry expectations on Monday.

Of late, December cotton has been surging from one contract high to another, amid Mill fixation buying and new speculators bullishly entering the trade. To that end, the market has closed higher 12 out of the last 13 trading sessions. As of Friday’s close, spot December finished 6.07 cents up on the week, 4.80 cents higher so far on the month and is 36.90 cents higher on the year.

For Friday, December settled at 110.60 cents, down 1.01 cents, March ended at 107.91 cents, minus 0.82 cent and December 2022 ended at 88.68 cents, 0.18 cent lower; estimated volume was 61,101 contracts.