By Keith Brown, DTN Contributing Cotton Analyst 

Cotton’s old crop futures finished Friday’s session lower, while new crop contracts ended slightly higher. Trading was slow and volume was moderate as traders prepped the three-day MLK holiday weekend, and some of that action included the unwinding of the July/December spread. Additionally, traders have concerns over the inauguration of Joe Biden next Wednesday. With talk of violence and troops being massed in the nation’s capital, few market participants wanted to initiate new futures positions. to that end, we were told some cash cotton merchants halted, albeit temporarily, all buying of the 2020 crop till after next Tuesday.

Because of the MLK holiday, weekly sales and exports will be delayed till Friday. Currently total sales for the 2020-21 season stand at 84% of USDA’s original forecast. As the market will be closed on Monday, there will no DTN cotton comments on Monday

Friday afternoon the CFTC will issue its market participant data indicating what entities hold what positions. The last report showed trend-following speculators controlling hold some 70,000 net long contracts.

Spot March cotton closed up 0.93 cent on the week and 2.58 cents on the month and year. Friday, March cotton closed at 80.70 cents, down 0.45 cent, July settled at 82.35 cents, down 0.37 cent and December cotton ended at 77.02 cents, up 0.22 cent. Friday’s estimated volume was 24,570 contracts.