By Keith Brown, DTN Contributing Cotton Analyst 

Cotton spent much of its Friday trading lower, albeit on unenthusiastic volume. The market was mainly pressured by certain outside financial markets that tanked on fears that the Federal Reserve will initiate its tapering policy next week.

The Fed meets on Tuesday/Wednesday, and then makes its announcement Wednesday afternoon. Some analysts feel invoking tapering is tantamount to increasing interest rates. With that notion, the U.S. dollar was higher Friday.

Friday afternoon, the CFTC will issue its weekly commitment of traders report. The managed-money funds are carrying a huge net long position, but to date the new crop has failed to close over the 95.00-cent mark.

Other traders feel that if those trend-following speculators are not soon vindicated by higher prices in the market, they may begin to liquidate. Moreover, with harvest just over the hill, that pressure may become all the more aggravated.

Into next week, the market will see a crop condition update on Monday, which may offer some insight into the recent hurricane adversities. Then, on Thursday, USDA will issue its weekly export sales. Average weekly sales are roughly running some 300,000 bales, with China becoming a top consistent buyer.

For this week, December cotton finished down 1.17 cents for the week, down 0.20 cent on the month, but 18.70 cents higher on the year.

For Friday, December settled at 92.33 cents, down 0.18 cent, March ended at 91.59 cents, down 0.21 cent and December 2022 ended at 82.13 cents, 0.12 cent lower; estimated volume was 19,625 contracts.