DTN Closing Cotton Commentary

The cotton market posted another round of new contract lows today, before paring its losses to post a slightly lower finish. Most buying was of the short-covering variety. With the ongoing government shutdown, traders are using data from two weeks ago as a “baseline” and then are “improvising” a version of “dead reckoning” to formulate the status of cotton’s current supply-demand situation.

Agriculture Secretary Brooke Rollins said late last week that the Trump administration would be able to deliver a “significant program” to help farmers once the ongoing government shutdown ends. “We’ve got to get the government reopened so that we can move forward … and once we do, we’ll be able to move out a significant program to help our farmers,” Rollins said in a cabinet meeting.

Federal Reserve Chair Jerome Powell said in a speech today that the central bank is nearing a point where it will stop its tightening program but gave no long run indication of where interest rates were heading. However, the financial markets took the news as positive with both the Dow and Gold advancing higher.

For Tuesday, December 2025 ended at 63.51 cents, minus 8 points, while March 2026 closed at 65.09 cents, off 17 points. Tuesday’s estimated volume was 58,405 contracts.

Keith Brown can be reached at commodityconsults@gmail.com