By Keith Brown, DTN Contributing Cotton Analyst 

The market was able to somewhat reduce its earlier steep decline from Monday morning, although it still settled with triple-digit losses. Of course, the dominating news was the Russian/Ukrainian situation. Reportedly there was some diplomatic progress made between the two nations Monday. Besides the geo-political troubles, the cotton market is still smarting from last Wednesday’s neutral-to-unfriendly supply-demand data, Thursday’s wobbly export sales, and Sunday’s NCC announcement of increased 2022 acres.

This Friday marks the start of spot March’s delivery. That is, with Monday a federal holiday (President’s Day) all long traders must exit their spot month futures or risk getting entangled in the delivery process.

West Texas growers are indicating how dry that Lone Star State has become. To that end, it has been a common practice over the years for some producers to actually irrigate their fields to prep them when planting time rolls around. However, given the high costs of 2022 inputs, we are being told that very little of that practice will happen this season.

Monday, March cotton settled at 122.93 cents, down 2.35 cents, July ended at 117.89, down 2.23 cents, and December finished at 103.54, 1.65 cents lower. Monday’s estimated volume was 49,106 contracts.