Cotton falls on dollar strength but pares losses into close

ICE cotton futures fell on Tuesday, pressured by a sharply stronger dollar, but pared losses just ahead of the end of the trading session, consolidating further into an increasingly tight trading range. "It portends a breakout at some point," Jordan Lea, chairman and co-owner of Eastern Trading in South Carolina, said of the prolonged period of sideways trading. "When you do get super tight like that, the breakouts, when they do come, tend to be more impactful."
December cotton on ICE Futures US settled down 0.25 cent on Tuesday, a 0.4 percent fall, at 64.55 cents per pound. It traded within a range of 63.93 and 65.03 cents a pound. Farmers had planted 94 percent of their intended acreage in the week ended June 21, up from 91 percent the prior week but still below the five-year average of 100 percent, according to US government data released Monday after market close. Certificated cotton stocks deliverable as of June 22 totalled 175,725 480-lb bales, unchanged from the previous session. The dollar index was up 1.2 percent. The Thomson Reuters CoreCommodity CRB Index, which tracks 19 commodities, was up 0.5 percent. The Relative Strength Index in the most-active contract fell to 50.012.