By Keith Brown, DTN Contributing Cotton Analyst 

After spending the day traversing both sides of unchanged, the cotton market did end with a moderately higher close Wednesday. The market had posted life-of-contract highs this past Monday, suggesting the bullish trend remains intact. To that end, speculators had increased their net long position to 68,000-plus contracts for last week.

This Friday USDA will issue its holiday-delayed weekly export-sales data. Naturally, traders are anticipating strong numbers. Last week saw a marketing-year high shipments number of 318,000-plus bales.

On Monday, March cotton will enter its delivery period. As of Wednesday morning, spot March’s open interest stood at 17,400 contracts. Yet, all but a scant few of those contracts will enter into the notice period. So, clearly a ton of paring down must happen by midday Friday.

Wednesday, March cotton closed at 88.36 cents, up 0.24 cent, July settled at 90.71 cents, up 0.39 cent and December cotton ended at 85.00 cents, up 0.19 cent; estimated volume was 38,922 contracts.