At one time Tuesday, the Dow Jones was down some 500 points. Poor third quarter earnings from several major companies were the superficial cause for the decline. At any rate, give cotton’s fragile nature, there was no way it was going higher, with so many other markets crumbling around it.

Thus, spot December traded a low of 78.36 cents, before buyers began to emerge rallying prices back over the 79.00 cents mark. Tuesday’s estimated volume was 32,2000 contracts traded.

One bit of news that might have help cotton recover was the announcement that President Trump and President Xi of China would indeed meet at the end of November at the G-20 economic gathering in Buenos Aries. The obvious hope is some sort of dialogue would begin which might lead to an end of the trade war.

The next key report to potentially impact the market will be Thursday’s weekly sales and exports. The last few weeks have seen not only weaker sales, but consecutive Chinese cancellations as well.

December cotton settled Tuesday 78.99 cents, down 103 points, March was 80.70 cents, down 75 points.