NEW YORK: ICE cotton futures dipped on Monday, as the dollar ticked up and market participants awaited a monthly supply-and-demand report from the US Department of Agriculture (USDA).
The cotton contract for December was last down 0.78 cent, or 0.7%, at 109.82 cents per lb by 12:41 p.m. EDT (1641 GMT), recovering after dropping more than 2%.
Rogers Varner, president of Varner Brokerage in Cleveland, Mississippi, said investors are pausing ahead of the report tomorrow, as most of the recent move higher has been caused by perceived or real shortages in China, which needs to be confirmed.
The USDA's monthly World Agricultural and Supply Demand Estimates (WASDE) report is due at 12:00 p.m. EDT on Tuesday.
Its weekly export sales report last week showed a dip in net sales. However, China has been the top buyer of US cotton in recent weeks, sparking a rally in cotton prices.
Last week, the cotton contract struck its upper limit twice, and Friday's high was an all-time peak for the December contract.
The dollar strengthened to hold near a recently touched one-year peak, making the natural fiber more expensive for customers holding other currencies, potentially hurting demand.
"The two markets that cotton follows sometimes are crude oil and copper and both of them are up, so that's part of the reason that cotton has come back sharply today from its lows, so that's a pretty good rally," Varner said. Total futures market volume fell by 27,334 to 30,702 lots. Data showed total open interest fell 2,055 to 287,573 contracts in the previous session.
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