ICE cotton futures fell for the fifth straight session, ending their worst week in more than six months as a stronger dollar continued to prompt speculator liquidation, though traders noted prices remained locked in a tight trading range. "We're back at the bottom of that four-cent channel," said Ron Lawson, a partner at commodity investment firm Logic Advisors in Sonoma, California. Cotton contracts for July settled down by 0.43 cent on Friday, a 0.7 percent drop, to 63.30 cents per pound. It traded within a range of 63.28 and 64.12 cents a pound.
July cotton ended the week down 3.54 cents, or 0.5 percent, its sharpest weekly decline since the week ended November 14. July cotton's discount to December cotton rose to 1.08 cents a lb, from 0.97 cents a lb the prior session. Total futures market volume fell by 4,985 lots to 22,521. Data showed total open interest gained 1,722 to 187,272 contracts in the previous session.
Certificated cotton stocks deliverable as of May 21 totalled 112,543 480-lb bales, down from 110,484 in the previous session. The dollar index was up 0.95 percent. The Thomson Reuters CoreCommodity CRB Index, which tracks 19 commodities, was down 1.17 percent. Relative Strength Index in the most-active contract fell to 39.373.