Benchmark cotton prices on ICE rose for the second straight day on Thursday, continuing a rebound from three-month lows after the release of a stronger-than-expected export sales report, while the weaker dollar provided additional support. "We're just coming back into the range," said Jordan Lea, chairman and co-owner of Eastern Trading in South Carolina, noting that cotton's recent test of the bottom end of a thin, months-long trading range made holding short positions undesirable. "Certainly nobody wants to sell it."
The market received a slight boost from the US government export sales report released Thursday, which showed that the United States sold a higher-than-expected 91,500 bales of cotton from the 2014/15 crop in the past week, up 79 percent from the prior week and up 64 percent from the prior four-week average.
December cotton on ICE Futures US settled up by 0.2 cent on Thursday, a 0.3 percent gain, at 64.74 cents per lb. It traded within a range of 64.23 and 65.28 cents.
Total futures market volume fell by 1,712 to 11,618 lots. Data showed total open interest gained 415 to 176,182 contracts in the previous session.
Certificated cotton stocks deliverable as of July 22 totalled 128,537 480-lb bales, down from 131,513 in the previous session.
The dollar index was down 0.51 percent. The Thomson Reuters CoreCommodity CRB Index, which tracks 19 commodities, was down 1.11 percent.
The Relative Strength Index in the most-active contract rose to 43.846.
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