By Keith Brown, DTN Contributing Cotton Analyst 

The cotton market continued to unravel Friday (no pun) as month end squaring, election jitters and a return to harvesting efforts collectively weighed on prices. Certain managed-money speculators have been net overloaded long for some time, causing the market to become overbought. However, speculators were encouraged in their buying by the appearance of several adverse weather events over the past weeks, the last one being Hurricane Zeta. However, next week, according to the six- to 10-day outlook, the weather will clear and producers can quickly return to gathering their crop.

Of course, next week also brings the highly contentious presidential election and the nation is sitting on pins and needles as to its outcome.

Monday afternoon USDA will issue its latest harvest updates. As it stands, the 2020 harvest is pretty much on its historical schedule, but given all the raucous weather, producers want their tasks completed ASAP. Last report had the crop about 43% harvested.

As the market enters the month of November, its underlying fundamental drivers will be COVID-19 and the continuing harvest. To the former, COVID-19 infections have been on the rise, with the U.S. posting a record high day on Thursday. This situation could cause more restrictions on the U.S. economy. However, many Americans do not want to go the way of Europe and shut down the country again.

For Friday, December cotton closed at 68.92 cents, down 0.90 cent, March settled at 69.78 cents, down 1.02 cents and December 2021 finished at 68.41 cents, down 0.62 cent. Estimated volume was a huge 48,412 contracts.