Keith Brown DTN Contributing Cotton Analyst    

The cotton market made new lows Tuesday for its bearish move. This latest downtrend originated off the August high. Traders fear higher interest rates will strengthen the U.S. dollar and therefore hurt export sales. In addition, the market is still smarting from the last crop report, in which USDA tabulators added production back into the supply part of the equation. Lastly, Biden's Taiwan comments from the past Sunday night greatly irritated the Chinese, which will only exacerbate an already frail relationship.    

The Federal Reserve began its two-day monetary policy meeting Tuesday. Analysts expect the central bank to increase rates by three-quarters of a point on Wednesday. One trader noted that the central bank had not raised rates to combat inflation since the early 1980's, thus any surprise may come in the Fed's quarterly projections on inflation and the economy.    

This Thursday, USDA will issue its next round of export sales. Last week the agency reported an odd summary of missing numbers. To our understanding only business for calendar September was seen, and not the missing two weeks from August. Perhaps there will be a better summary this week. That data is out at 8:30 a.m. EDT.    

For Tuesday, December closed at 93.33 cents, down 2.71 cents; March 23 finished at 90.45 cents, down 2.60 cents, and July 23 settled at 86.02 cents, 2.12 cents lower. Tuesday's estimated volume was 36,904 contracts.    

Keith Brown can be reached at commodityconsults@gmail.com 

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