ICE cotton fell on Friday after hitting an over seven-month high earlier in the session as investors took profits and as the US dollar firmed. Cotton contracts for March settled down 0.51 cent, or 0.69 percent, at 73.72 cents per lb. It traded within a range of 73.62 and 74.28 cents a lb, its highest since May 4.
A firmer dollar and profit-taking weighed prices down after Thursday's jump to over seven-month highs, according to Gabriel Crivorot, analyst at Societe Generale in New York. The contract was up 0.6 percent for the week, registering its seventh consecutive weekly gain.
"Even thought it dropped today, the general sentiment of the market is bullish over the last few weeks ... so, I'd definitely focus more on the fact that it has been moving up lately than on today's fall," Crivorot said. Meanwhile, speculators raised net long position by 9,898 contracts to 76,409 in week to Dec. 5, Commodity Futures Trading Commission data showed on Friday.
The dollar index was up 0.12 percent. The Thomson Reuters CoreCommodity CRB Index, which tracks 19 commodities, was up 0.30 percent. Total futures market volume fell by 3,932 to 31,997 lots. Data showed total open interest gained 1,540 to 251,409 contracts in the previous session. Certificated cotton stocks deliverable as of Dec. 6 totalled 47,628 480-lb bales, unchanged from 47,628 in the previous session.
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