By Keith Brown, DTN Contributing Cotton Analyst 

Just as cotton experienced an exaggerated bearish move on Friday, so too did it experience an exaggerated bullish move Monday morning. In fact, cotton challenged overhead chart resistance at 62.00 cents before easing off. Still, Monday’s triple-digit close put new life back into the bulls. To some degree, cotton’s big turnaround was inspired by gold’s move to all-time highs and strength in the Dow Jones. To that end, Friday’s CFTC data showed managed money speculators were net long some 30,000 plus contracts, increasing the net buy position by nearly 600 contracts last week.

Social media indicated some pretty nasty damages to the Corpus crop. Apparently, and sadly, Hurricane Hannh did a number on that segment of the U.S. crop. However, there are other storms that bear watching.

Monday afternoon, USDA will issue its weekly crop condition data. Although some forecasts reflect less heat, and a touch more rain, the 2020 crop is still wounded from all the weather adversities that have already befallen it. Some of those troubles ought to show in the next crop report on August 12. Equally important will be this week’s export sales. This will be the last such report as the 2019-20 crop fades off Friday.

Monday, December cotton settled at 61.16 cents, up 1.06 cents, March ended at 61.85 cents, up 1.03 cent and December cotton finished at 61.73 cents, 1.02 cents higher. Estimated volume was 23,250 contracts.