By Keith Brown, DTN Contributing Cotton Analyst 

The cotton market started out with an early Monday 2.00-cent spill, before gathering itself to close moderately lower. Some traders pointed to the rains occurring across much of Texas as a bearish development, while others saw Friday’s commitment of traders report, which depicted managed-money speculators involved in a liquidation spree, as also equally bearish. Nonetheless, the market broke early, but improved late.

The U.S. dollar was higher Monday. Financial traders still fear rising interest rates will keep the greenback inching up. The Federal Reserve meets Tuesday and Wednesday and will announce any changes to its monetary policy on St. Patrick’s Day.

Also, this Wednesday, the DOE will release its crude oil inventories. For the past two week there have been huge builds in crude stock, including one record increase of 21 million barrels. However, traders took their bullish cue from the now shuttered Keystone Pipeline, as well as inaction by OPEC+ as the more influential news stories.

A major rains event is leaving Texas and will sweep across the U.S. Delta and into the Southeast this week. The six- to 10-day forecast calls for above normal rainfall for the U.S. Southland with normal to below normal temperatures for the same location.

Monday May cotton closed at 86.72 cents, down 0.84 cent, July settled at 87.76 cents, down 0.81 cent and December ended at 83.55 cents, down 0.65 cent; estimated volume was 21,576 contracts.