New York cotton futures gain on strong export sales data

ICE cotton futures rose on Thursday to mark its biggest one-day percentage gain in a week, on robust export sales data from the US Department of Agriculture (USDA). Cotton contracts for March settled up 0.34 cent, or 0.49 percent - its highest since November 10 - at 69.18 cents per lb. It traded within a range of 68.79 and 69.49 cents a lb.
"We saw a much better than expected export report of over 500,000 bales with lot of it going to Pakistan, some US bales probably replacing some Indian bales," said Ron Lee, general manager at McCleskey Cotton in Bronwood, Georgia, adding "demand seems to be good in the export market."
Earlier in the day the USDA reported net upland sales of 506,700 running bales for 2017/2018, a marketing-year high, in its weekly export sales report. "The prices have been in a two cent range for over a month ... it seems to me everybody is already in a holiday mood and prices will probably remain sideways for a while," Lee said.
Total futures market volume rose by 2,653 to 36,105 lots. Data showed total open interest fell 1,886 to 224,750 contracts in the previous session. Certificated cotton stocks deliverable as of November 15 totalled 47,970 480-lb bales, down from 48,128 in the previous session. The dollar index was up 0.13 percent. The Thomson Reuters CoreCommodity CRB Index, which tracks 19 commodities, was down 0.21 percent.