Cotton futures languished near 6-1/2 year lows for a third straight session on Friday and notched up their biggest weekly loss in nearly five months on a stronger dollar and overall bearish trend in commodities. "Nobody is going to step up here and buy cotton," said Georgia-based cotton broker Keith Brown, noting the "rabid" volatility in commodities and stock prices.
Global cotton stocks are expected to decline for the second consecutive season in 2016/17, research firm Cotton Outlook said on Friday. Cotton contracts for May settled down 0.23 cent, or 0.40 percent, at 57.53 cents per lb, after hitting 57.26 cents, registering the biggest weekly percentage loss since September last year.
Underscoring the level of bearishness in the market, data on Friday showed that speculative investors increased their net short in natural fibre to their highest in just over a year as prices sank to their lowest since 2009. Total futures market volume fell by 3,288 to 16,465 lots. Data showed total open interest gained 1,451 to 194,758 contracts in the previous session. The dollar index was up 0.81 percent. The Thomson Reuters CoreCommodity CRB Index, which tracks 19 commodities, was down 0.59 percent.
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