By Keith Brown, DTN Contributing Cotton Analyst 

Cotton ended Monday’s session higher as the market prepares for Wednesday’s acreage report. General estimates pegged 2021 acres at 11.80 million versus USDA’s March number of 12.036 million. This compares to the 2020 number of 12.09 million. Monday’s cotton market also positively benefited from the strong surge in Chicago grains. Corn and soybean futures traded sharply higher.

Monday afternoon USDA will issue its latest crop condition update. Last week saw the nation’s 20201 cotton crop rated 52% good to excellent. Within that data, Texas was 35% good to excellent and Georgia was 69% good to excellent. The report is out at 3 p.m. CDT.

The Labor Department will issue its jobs data for the month of June on Tuesday. Last month’s tally was a disappointing 559,000 jobs; this month’s expectations are 690,000 new non-farm jobs created. In addition, many states will be ending their COVID support money at the end of the month.

For Monday, July closed at 86.66 cents, up .23 cent; December settled at 87.43 cents, plus .25 cent; and March (2022) ended at 87.03 cents, .32 cent higher. Monday’s estimated volume was 15,496 contracts.