Cotton futures are showing 98 to 138 point gains so far on Tuesday, as bulls are finding some steam with the help from a USDA acreage cut. The US dollar index is back down $0.511 to $97.850, as crude oil futures are down 76 cents.
USDA showed a total of 840,000 planted acres and 1.3 million harvested acres cut from cotton this morning with yield up 53 lbs to 862 lbs/ac. Production was still trimmed by 1.39 million bales to 13.21 million bales. That mixed with a 100,000 bale cut to old crop stocks to 4 million bales, helped to tighten the new crop stocks. That was down 1 million bales to 3.6 million on a 500,000 bale cut to exports.
