ICE cotton settled lower on Monday on commercial hedge pressure, after hitting the highest level in about two and a half months earlier in the session. Cotton contracts for March settled down 0.51 cent, or 0.71 percent, at 71.42 cents per lb. It traded within a range of 71.19 and 72.39 cents a lb, its highest since Sept. 11.
"Merchants are buying physical cotton off the March contract ... when they buy (physical) cotton, they have to hedge it on the board and sell it until they can move it all out," said Keith Brown, principal at cotton brokers Keith Brown and Co in Moultrie, Georgia. Physical demand for the natural fibre is rising because the global economy is getting stronger and new home sales are rising in the United States. This could lead to increased demand for textile products, according to Brown.
The US Department of Agriculture's (USDA) weekly crop progress report showed 79 percent of the cotton crop was harvested in the United States by the week ended Nov. 26, up from 74 percent in the previous week. The USDA also noted that crop progress data for the week ended Nov. 26 would be the final report for the 2017 season and the next report will be released in April 2018.
Meanwhile, speculators raised net long positions by 6,676 contracts to 50,961 in the week to Nov. 21, Commodity Futures Trading Commission data showed. Total futures market volume rose by 7,931 to 31,996 lots. Data showed total open interest gained 2,473 to 233,331 contracts in the previous session. Certificated cotton stocks deliverable as of Nov. 24 totalled 47,951 480-lb bales, unchanged from 47,951 in the previous session. The dollar index was up 0.15 percent. The Thomson Reuters CoreCommodity CRB Index, which tracks 19 commodities, was down 0.31 percent.
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