Cotton futures touched a six-week low in heavy volume on Wednesday amid concerns about the economy in top consumer China, while US producer selling picked up as farmers who had held off until the new year for tax reasons entered the market. "There's a lot of fear over there right now," Ron Lee, general manager at McCleskey Cotton in Bronwood, Georgia, said of China, adding that some selling in the largest-volume day in the March contract since November 25 was "first-of-the-year selling by growers" who did not want the sales on their 2015 books.
The commodities complex dropped to its lowest level in 13-1/2 years amid concerns about the Chinese economy. Private analytics firm Informa Economics pegged the current US 2015/16 cotton crop at 13 million bales, up from a forecast of 12.9 million bales last month. March cotton on ICE Futures US settled down 0.68 cent, or 1.08 percent, at 62 cents per lb, after falling as low as 61.86 cents a lb, its lowest level since November 25.
Total futures market volume rose by 14,649 to 30,988 lots. Data showed total open interest gained 530 to 185,123 contracts in the previous session. Certificated cotton stocks deliverable as of January 5 totalled 64,292 480-lb bales, down from 64,340 in the previous session. The dollar index was down 0.24 percent. The Thomson Reuters CoreCommodity CRB Index, which tracks 19 commodities, was down 2.09 percent.
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