After a two-sided trading affair cotton finished 41 points higher for the day. Cotton futures rallied to daily highs of 75.33 follow-ing a reasonably sized US export sales report revealed new sales of 196,500 bales. Modest enquiry from spinners has been most-ly focused on African cotton as mills continued to remain very price sensitive.
Once again the index funds created a late stir on the market, increasing their trading activity into Thursday's mar-ket close. On the whole, generally soft commodities have pro-duced a quiet week of activity, with the trade awaiting the re-lease of the January 13 USDA S&D report. For cotton, trade ex-pectations suggest a tightening of US stocks could be on the cards due to an increase in exports.
Rainfall & thunderstorms were experienced across multiple US cotton districts yesterday, which will have provided a welcomed break to the dry conditions currently plaguing many US cotton regions. Technically, cotton continues to remain firm pinched within the current range of 74.28-75.92 and will need to break this range to provide some short term market direction.