ICE cotton posts first weekly loss in five weeks

Cotton futures dipped in light volume on Friday, solidifying the fibre's first weekly loss after four straight weeks of gains as the upward move limited demand, dashing hopes that the rally would lift prices out of a tight trading range.
"At this level, you're not going to see mill demand," said Jim Lambert, director of sales at FCStone Merchant Services in Nashville, Tennessee, adding that the week's move lower likely limited upside in the near future. "Our bias right now is sideways to negative, but definitely rangebound." March cotton on ICE Futures US settled down 0.06 cent, or 0.09 percent, at 63.71 cents per lb. It traded within a range of 63.43 and 63.91 cents a lb.
Total futures market volume fell by 12,437 to 13,482 lots. Data showed total open interest gained 99 to 197,176 contracts in the previous session. Certificated cotton stocks deliverable as of December 10 totalled 65,247 480-lb bales, up from 65,126 in the previous session. The dollar index was down 0.41 percent. The Thomson Reuters CoreCommodity CRB Index, which tracks 19 commodities, was down 1.23 percent.