NEW YORK: Cotton futures ended Monday down by their daily limit on wholesale investor liquidation as European debt woes and budget deadlock in the US underscored fears a global recession would cripple demand for cotton, analysts said.
Global stocks sank Monday due to worries over out-of-control debt on both sides of the Atlantic.
The spot December cotton contract on ICE Futures US dropped 4.00 cents to finish at 90.81 cents per lb, with the day's top at 95.78 cents.
The now most-active March cotton futures fell 2.86 cents to end at 90.41 cents, moving from 90.16 to 93.71 cents.
Total volume traded Monday hit almost 29,400 lots, one-third above the 30-day norm, preliminary Thomson Reuters data showed.
Sharon Johnson, senior cotton analyst for commodity brokerage Penson Futures in Atlanta, said the downturn in the market was caused primarily by "what is going on in Europe and Washington (DC)."
"All the minuses for cotton are there," she said, listing them down as the protracted debt crisis in Europe, the failure of the US Congress "super-committee" to reach a compromise budget deal, and the urgency felt by some investors to get out of December before it goes into delivery on Wednesday.
Open interest in the contract was at 7.068 lots as of last Friday. Traders forecast by close of trade on Monday, open interest in the cotton market will be down to 3,000 to 4,000 lots.
Market participants were eyeing whether consumer demand will pick up or potential buyers like China, the world's No. 1 consumer of cotton, will hold back and wait for prices to weaken further before booking orders at the lows, analysts said.
Last week, the Chinese were big buyers in the US Agriculture Department's weekly export sales report on Thursday.
Open interest in cotton, usually taken as an indicator of investor exposure in the market, stood at 138,160 lots as of Nov. 18, exchange data showed.
Total volume traded Friday in the cotton market reached 27,495 lots as of Nov. 18, ICE futures US data said.
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