By Keith Brown DTN Cotton Correspondent 

Cotton seesawed between positive and negative all day Thursday as traders weigh out the market’s immediate fundamentals. Thus, coming into Thursday’s session, the market saw the U.S. dollar higher, but shaky trade comments from China. Just Wednesday afternoon, China took the hardline position of wanting all U.S. tariffs lifted before any trade negotiations could proceed. Of course, the U.S. position was to not lift any tariffs but keep the talks going. Currently, the talks are at an impasse.

Friday, USDA will issue its weekly sales and exports data at 8:30 a.m. Although business has been running hot-to-cold over this season, of late, sales have been fairly decent, with a lot of different countries involved. Naturally, Chinese participation, such as last week’s purchase of 25,000 bales, is wanted, and would go a long way towards helping the psychology of the trade.

Nonetheless, even without China, U.S. export-sales have been brisk, with the current 2019-20 season outpacing the five-year. The reason China is such an important part to the U.S. market is its historical reliability of buying size with prompt payments. Of course, now that reputation has been somewhat soiled.

December cotton closed at 64.27 cents, March finished at 66.08 cents, up 0.03 cent and December ended at 68.41 cents, down 0.06 cent. Estimated volume was 42,936 contracts.