By Duane Howell

Turmoil in emerging markets and currency gyrations have contributed to keeping a lid on rallies in cotton futures in the face of another batch of stellar U.S. export sales.

Spot March closed higher three days in a row but still lost 130 points for the week ended Thursday to settle at 86.03 cents, just above the midpoint of its 453-point range from 88.19 to 83.66 cents.

March fell below 84 cents three consecutive sessions but bounced to close above it each time. Its discount to May has continued to widen but its 200-day moving average (83.71) has offered firm support.

The May contract dipped 74 points to 86.87 cents, July dropped 89 points to 86.64 cents and December fell 271 points to 76.60 cents.

Stocks in deliverable position expanded 77,359 bales on the week to 146,537, up from 34,087 at the beginning of the month.

Several days of anxiety about emerging economies — including Turkey, the second-largest export customer of U.S. cotton — kept traders on edge. Relative calm appeared to have returned near the end of the week.

Cash grower-to-business sales fell to 21,158 bales from 53,312 bales on The Seam. Those were the smallest since the week ended Oct. 31. Prices slipped 63 points to an average of 77.15 cents and premiums over loan repayment rates eased 13 points to 25.86 cents. Daily price averages ranged from 77.14 to 79.48 cents.

Lunar New Year holidays, which began Friday, will affect some export markets for U.S. cotton. Most of ChinaΆs cotton-related activities are expected to resume on Feb. 7, including sales auctions, though the government procurement program wonΆt restart until Feb. 17.

U.S. all-cotton export sales have surged to 992,300 running bales for delivery this season and a combined 1.101 million bales for this season and next. Upland sales for this season totaled 976,200 bales, largest since the two-week span ended Nov. 17, 2011.

The data for 2013-14 bolstered expectations that USDA in its next supply-demand report on Feb. 10 is likely to raise its export estimate and cut its ending stocks forecast.

The carryout already is projected at a tight 3 million bales, down 900,000 bales from the beginning inventory, smallest since 2010-11 and the third lowest since 1995-96.

All-cotton export sales for shipment this season of 487,500 running bales during the latest reporting week ended Jan. 23 boosted 2013-14 commitments to 8.692 million RB, 85 percent of the USDA estimate. A year ago, commitments were about 79 percent of final shipments.

Commitments trailed year-ago bookings by about 13 percent. The USDAΆs January supply-demand report estimated exports would fall 19 percent from last season.

All-cotton shipments hit a marketing year high of 325,600 bales, hiking exports for the season to 3.976 million. This is about 39 percent of the USDA estimate, compared with about 37 percent of final shipments at the corresponding point last season.

To achieve the USDA forecast, shipments now need to average roughly 238,800 running bales a week, while weekly sales averaging only 57,400 bales would match the estimate.

On the U.S. crop scene, upland classing slowed to 162,223 running bales during the week ended Jan. 23 from 279,051 bales the previous week, boosting the total for the season to 11.632 million bales.

The total was almost 96 percent of the January crop estimate. Cotton tenderable on futures contracts fell to 49 percent for the week and 61.8 percent for the season from 50.6 percent and 62 percent, respectively.

Classing of 54,970 bales from the Texas High and Rolling Plains boosted the regional tally at Lubbock, Lamesa and Abilene to 3.341 million bales. Most of the weekΆs classing was at Abilene, which graded 33,824 bales, to hike the West Texas total there to 570,230 bales.

The Abilene office also grades cotton from East Texas, Oklahoma and Kansas and has classed an overall total of 932,632 bales for the season.

Most gins in the High Plains have finished for the season, while gins continued operations in the Rolling Plains, according to a weekly review by the cotton division of USDAΆs Agricultural Marketing Service.

Gins in the Southeast expected to complete operations within two weeks. Some fields remained to be picked in isolated areas where soggy conditions delayed harvesting. Ginning also continued in Central Arizona and was completed in the San Joaquin Valley except for roller ginning.

Meanwhile, trend-following funds bought a net 5,908 lots in U.S. futures-options combined during the week ended Jan. 21 to boost their net longs to 38,568 lots, according to supplemental traders-commitments data from the Commodity Futures Trading Commission.

This was their largest net long position since Oct. 8. Index funds sold a net 894 lots to shave their net longs to 59,404, while traders with non-reportable positions bought 4,163 lots to raise theirs to 6,029 lots.

Commercials sold a net 9,176 lots — they added 12,398 shorts and 3,222 longs — to hike their net shorts to 104,000 lots. In futures alone, non-commercials raised their net longs 3.4 percentage points to 25.2 percent of the rising open interest.

The market plunged on long liquidation following the report, posting the largest one-day loss – 3.4 percent, basis March, since October. Open interest fell about 2,000 lots on the week to 183,878.

Separately, unfixed on-call positions based in March fell 997 lots to 20,400 on the mill side and 1,000 lots to 5,318 on the producer side during the week ended Jan. 17, CFTC call data showed.

The net difference thus edged up three lots to 15,081, which comprised 13.85 percent of MarchΆs open interest, compared with 13.81 percent a week earlier. The unfixed mill position outweighed that of producers by a ratio of 3.84:1, up from 3.39:1.

Index funds now have begun to roll their longs from March into May, selling March and buying May.