Cotton futures touch two-week high on chart-fuelled buying

ICE cotton futures touched their highest level since early November on Monday on a chart-fuelled jump, before paring gains on producer selling. Commodities markets were broadly higher, lending support. A breach of resistance at a long-term downtrend line around 62.60 cents per lb and the 20- and 50-day moving averages was technically positive, said a US trader.
"We hit trailing (buy-)stops," he said. The March cotton contract on ICE Futures US settled up 0.62 cent, or 1 percent, at 62.61 cents per lb. It traded as high as 63.55 cents a lb. The cash to second-month spread fell 0.52 cent to 0.9 cents per lb.
Total futures market volume rose by 15,164 to 56,559 lots. Data showed total open interest fell 7,644 to 184,225 contracts in the previous session. Certificated cotton stocks deliverable as of Friday totalled 51,750 480-lb bales, up from 49,851 in the previous session. The dollar index was up 0.37 percent. The Thomson Reuters Core Commodity CRB Index, which tracks 19 commodities, was up 0.35 percent.