US cotton ended a touch lower on Thursday as players took profits after near 10-month highs in the previous session driven by market talk that cotton acreage could be the smallest in 18 years.
The US Department of Agriculture is scheduled to report Friday on the area of cotton that farmers planted - as well as intended to plant - as of June 1, and analysts said the number could be about 500,000 acres below a similar survey taken three months back.
In March, USDA had estimated 2007 cotton plantings at 12.147 million acres. Analysts expect the latest figure to be revised downward to between 11.5 million and 11.6 million acres.
"If this number materialises tomorrow, it will be the lowest area under cotton since 1989," said Keith Brown of Keith Brown and Co in Moultrie, Georgia.
In 2006, cotton plantings totalled 15.276 million acres.
Benchmark December cotton on the New York Board of Trade settled down 0.06 cent, or 0.1 percent, at 61.63 cents a lb, after trading to a session high of 62.05 cents.
NYBOT's December cotton peaked 62.25 cents on Wednesday, its highest since September 3, as analysts began predicting that Friday's USDA report would show a drop in acreage.
The December contract on IntercontinentalExchange's NYBOT electronic cotton market was up 0.07 cent at 61.76 cents by 4:00 pm EDT (2000 GMT). Back months on NYBOT's cotton complex closed down 0.03 cent to up 0.10 cent. Open interest fell 556 lots to 201,451 lots as of Wednesday.
Comments
Comments are closed for this article.