Quite an eventful day Friday with the January job report released in the morning, the NCC planting intentions number released in the afternoon and the Mar10 options expiration by the end of the session. The job report shows a slight improvement in the unemployment rate to the current 9.7%, better than expected but nothing to celebrate. Dow Jones dropped sharply lower among fears and worries about the global economy but managed to rally in the final hour to close positively on the day. Cotton opened around unchanged, but dipped lower as dollar traded firmer. March contract has hit 68.18-68.20 and bounced back three times earlier this week, but gave way to the sell stops and took out this near term support today.

The early season planting intentions survey conducted by NCC pegged the cotton acres at 10.093 million for 2010, up 10.3% from 2009. For the week ending Feb 2nd, specs slashed more in their net long holdings, while commercials did the same in their net short holdings, as shown in charts on page 2. For now we are still trending higher in the dollar, which continues to be the key to long term direction, and the outside markets continue to influence the performance of cotton.