Cotton falls for third straight session as buyers hold out

Cotton futures fell for the third straight session on Monday, touching nearly a two-week low as prices on the upper end of a recent trading range continued to deter buyers, who held out for further dips. "We were overbought and we're kind of regathering ourselves," said Ron Lawson, a partner at commodity investment firm Logic Advisors in Sonoma, California. "Markets have to breathe. You have to exhale so you can inhale again."
March cotton on ICE Futures US settled down 0.33 cent, or 0.52 percent, at 63.38 cents per lb. It traded within a range of 62.98 and 63.91 cents a lb. Total futures market volume rose by 4,427 lots to 17,950. Data showed total open interest fell 1,271 contracts to 195,905 in the previous session. Certificated cotton stocks deliverable as of December 11 totalled 65,247 480-lb bales, unchanged from the previous session. The dollar index was up 0.07 percent. The Thomson Reuters CoreCommodity CRB Index, which tracks 19 commodities, was down 0.34 percent. Speculators raised their net long position to 54,806 from 39,666 in the latest week.