ICE cotton futures approached a six-week high on Thursday as speculators took advantage of a lack of hedge selling from producers, following last week's US government crop forecast that cut US production expectations more than expected. "That's not a clear signal that you ought to be selling," said Louis Rose, an independent cotton trader and consultant at Risk Analytics in Memphis, Tennessee. "You have no hedge pressure. You have no producer selling."
December cotton on ICE Futures US settled up by 0.4 cent on Thursday, a 0.6 percent gain, at 66.93 cents per pound, after rising as high as 66.99 cents a pound, its highest since July 10.
Total futures market volume fell by 6,399 to 16,488 lots. Data showed total open interest gained 2,024 to 192,930 contracts in the previous session.
Certificated cotton stocks deliverable as of August 19 totalled 85,680 480-lb bales, down from 87,954 in the previous session.
The dollar index was down 0.34 percent. The Thomson Reuters CoreCommodity CRB Index, which tracks 19 commodities, was up 0.54 percent.
The Relative Strength Index in the most-active contract rose to 63.645.
US export sales for the 2015/16 crop reached 52,800 bales in the prior week, with the primary destinations being Turkey, Mexico and Costa Rica, according to a weekly US government report.

Copyright Reuters, 2015

Comments

Comments are closed.