In a near bizarre trade, December cotton sloughed off the potential devastation to the Southeastern crop to close lower. Hurricane Michael is expected to make landfall Wednesday night then take a hard right hook, thanks to the upper level jet stream, and scurry across South Georgia and then up into the Carolinas. The Georgia crop is highly vulnerable to a wipeout as it is some 90% open. Power outages are expected.

There is an old marker that says, “whenever the news is bullish, but the market acts bearish, then it’s not bullish.” That old saying fit the session Tuesday.

We owe DTN subscribers an apology as we forgot that Monday was Columbus Day, a federal holiday, so the crop progress/condition we reported was from last week. The current data will be out Tuesday about 4 p.m. eastern.

Later this week, USDA will issue its monthly supply-demand data for September. Expectations are a small reduction in the U.S. Crop, Stocks and world stocks.

December cotton settled 7701 down 54, March was 7807, down 42, and Red December cotton was 7597, down 35. Estimated volume was 27,200 contracts traded.