December cotton was slightly lower Monday on tedious volume of 12,000 contracts. By now remnants of Hurricane Florence, now Tropical Storm Florence, have essentially been fully discounted by the market. However, until the flooding subsides, damage reports will be sketchy. The next opportunity USDA will have to make an official statement about Mid-Atlantic losses will be on its October supply-demand report.

The market also hunkered lower Monday as it awaited the next round of tariffs on Chinese goods to be announced by the Trump Administration sometimes this week. However, China has promised equal retaliation on the U.S. if additional tariffs are implemented. Yet, given the fact China exports much more to the U.S., than it imports, it soon could run out of economics bullets.

Certain key growing areas of India did receive beneficial rainfall over the weekend. Interestingly, India’s rate of sales are running near 100% of last year’s pace. China has been the most obvious buyer. However, in addition to India’s proximity to China, its currency, the Rupee, posted record new lows last week. Thus, her cascading devaluation makes her cotton less expensive on the world market.

The USDA will post the crop progress, and harvest, report Mondayat 4:00 p.m.

December cotton settled 8131, down 52, March cotton finished at 8164 down 50, and December 2019 concluded at 7748, down 13 points.