By Keith Brown, DTN Contributing Cotton Analyst 

The cotton market fell lower Friday in sympathy with cascading grains, energies and metals. Strength in the U.S. dollar may have precipitated the general decline but talk that a massive COVID-19 relief bill could stall in the Congress has spooked some traders. In fact, as of this writing soybeans and corn are nearly limit-down.

Friday afternoon the CFTC will report on the breakdown of traders in its commitments of traders data. However, Friday’s massive selloff in the agricultural futures will not be reflected in the information.

Next week is the end of January, and thus there may be more position squaring in many markets, including cotton. The Federal Reserve does meet next Tuesday, announcing its latest monetary policy regarding interest rates at 2 p.m. Wednesday. Of course, USDA will issue another of export-sales Thursday. Friday’s data did show superior shipments versus last week.

For the week, spot cotton finished up 0.86 cent, and for the month and year, up 3.44 cents.

For Friday, March cotton closed at 81.56 cents, down 1.01 cents, July settled at 83.56 cents, down 0.74 cent and December cotton ended at 78.47 cents, down 0.58 cent; estimated volume was 47,673 contracts.