Cotton futures rose to their highest levels in more than three months on Friday as signals mounted that poor harvest weather in top-producing state Texas had harmed crop yield and quality. A weekly US Department of Agriculture report showed just 56.4 percent of the crop this season was exchange-grade as of Thursday, a drop from recent weeks.
"We've lost cotton due to the weather in Texas," said Rogers Varner, president of Varner Brokerage in Cleveland, Mississippi. "The harvest is no longer hanging over the market, and the last two weeks demand has been good." March cotton on ICE Futures US settled up 0.76 cent, or 1.19 percent, at 64.71 cents per lb, after rising as high as 64.89 cents a lb.
The move cemented cotton's fourth consecutive weekly gain, the longest such streak since March and April. Total futures market volume rose by 1,297 to 26,235 lots. Data showed total open interest gained 2,994 to 186,376 contracts in the previous session. Certificated cotton stocks deliverable as of December 3 totalled 65,182 480-lb bales, down from 65,468 in the previous session. The dollar index was up 0.74 percent. The Thomson Reuters CoreCommodity CRB Index, which tracks 19 commodities, was down 0.03 percent.
Comments
Comments are closed.