The cotton market settled the day slightly higher, as it has several items on its trading plate. First is the U.S./China trade meeting. As of this writing, there has been no serious word on how the current talks are faring. We understand that President Trump will meet with China’s top negotiator Lui He on Thursday as an expression of America’s sincerity and seriousness on finding common ground.
The Federal Reserve announced unchanged rates for January. The Fed said in its post meeting text that it would be patient as it weighed the many factors of the economy before raising interest rates again.
On Thursday USDA will release its first weekly sales and export report in many weeks. The agency will release its missing data in a staggered way. As a result of the recent shutdown, weekly export sales have not been published since the December 2018. The below schedule will be implemented in an effort to bring reporting up to date:
- The week ending December 20, 2018 report will be published on Thursday, January 31, 2019.
- The week ending December 27, 2018, will be published on February 7, 2019.
- The week ending January 3, 2019, which will include the MY changeover figures for hides, skins, wet blues, pork and beef, will be published on February 14.
- A combined report for the weeks ending January 10, 17, 24, 31, 2019 and February 7, 14, 2019, will be published on February 22, 2019. We also understand January’s supply-demand data will be embedded within the February crop report on the eighth.
March cotton settled at 74.36 cents, up 0.21 cent, July was 0.25 cent higher at 77.02 cents and December closed out at 74.42 cents, up 0.19 cent. Wednesday’s estimated volume was 27,542 contracts traded.
