By Keith Brown, DTN Contributing Cotton Analyst 

The cotton market traded up, down, and all around on Monday, before eventually finishing slightly lower. Traders had one eye on Tropical Storm Fred, and the other on the tragic situation unfolding in Afghanistan.

To the former, Fred is intensifying as it prepares to make landfall in the Florida Panhandle and scoot up into Alabama. However, a fair portion of its rains will fall over the Georgia crop as well.

The Afghani situation speaks more to the financial markets. For a time, the Dow Jones was off some 200 points, but has seemed to regain its bullish poise Monday afternoon.

Monday afternoon, USDA will issue its weekly crop condition report. For many weeks, the government had been reporting that the 2021 crop was ever improving. In fact, last week the national crop was rated at 65% good to excellent. Surprisingly, however, tabulators lowered the crop in last week’s supply-demand report, and equally distracting was the reduction seen in future U.S. exports.

Per Friday’s WASDE, we note that the stocks-to-usage ratio has fallen to 17.1%, its lowest level since 2016-17, when it stood at 15.1%. To that end, U.S. cotton export sales were very strong last week, with a combined seasonal sale of 358,000 bales. That amount was the highest since March 11, as China bought 123,839 bales. That amount was its largest purchase since Jan. 7.

For Monday, December settled at 94.31 cents, down 0.01 cent, March ended at 93.26 cents, plus 0.07 cent and December 2022 ended at 84.01 cents, 0.69 cent higher; estimated volume was 22,009 contracts.