Cotton holds tight range as traders look for direction from WASDE report

NEW YORK: ICE cotton futures were little changed on Monday as investors held back from making large bets ahead of the US Department of Agriculture’s (USDA) monthly supply and demand report due later this week.

The cotton contract for March was up 0.16 cent, or 0.1%, at 115.16 cents per pound by 11:13 a.m. ET (1613 GMT). It traded within a range of 115.11 and 116.38 cents a lb.

“Cotton market is just staying sideways as there lot of hesitation going into Wednesday’s WASDE report. People are just waiting to see the outcome before any major adjustments,” said Bailey Thomen, cotton risk management associate at StoneX Group.

“However, there’s still a lot of strong demand out there for US cotton, good buyers that are willing to take even though the prices are pretty high. So that continues to be the underlying support in the market.”

The USDA’s monthly World Agricultural and Supply Demand Estimates (WASDE) report is due on Wednesday.

Meanwhile, the US dollar rose 0.2% against its rivals, making cotton more expensive for other currency holders.

Sentiment in wider financial markets remained weak, with Wall Street’s main indexes tumbling on Monday as heavyweight technology stocks dropped on expectations of a high interest rate environment.

Speculators increased net long position in cotton futures by 4,879 contracts to 77,234 in the week to Jan. 4, data from the Commodity Futures Trading Commission showed on Friday.

Total futures market volume fell by 14,112 to 12,014 lots. Data showed total open interest gained 561 to 245,943 contracts in the previous session.