NEW YORK: ICE cotton futures slipped on Tuesday on weak demand for the natural fiber and as investors booked profits from a recent strong run.
Cotton contracts for July settled down 0.29 cent, or 0.5%, at 60.52 cents per lb.
"The market has gone pretty far, pretty soon, without any strong fundamentals," said Jordan Lea, senior trader at DECA Global.
The contract rose over 7% last week after a dry spell in Texas raised concerns of crop damage.
"Overall, demand is still lousy" and the United States Department of Agriculture (USDA) might have to revise down its US export forecast, Lea said, adding such a revision could push prices down to the low 50 cents range.
The USDA's June World Agriculture Supply and Demand Estimates (WASDE) report is due on Thursday.
"We expect USDA to reduce US and world carryout by around 1 million and 1.5 million bales, respectively," Louis Rose, director of research and analytics at Tennessee-based Rose Commodity Group, said in a note.
The global coronavirus pandemic has hurt consumer appetite for apparel, translating into a roughly 12% decline in cotton prices so far this year.
Total futures market volume fell by 798 to 35,783 lots. Data showed total open interest fell 3,856 to 180,696 contracts in the previous session. Certificated cotton stocks deliverable as of June 8 totaled 19,750 480-lb bales, up from 17,636 in the previous session.
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