ICE cotton futures were little changed on Tuesday after a sharp week of losses brought prices back to attractive levels for mill purchases, ending the losing streak, though sharp gains in the US dollar pressured the market. "We've gotten down to levels where we're probably picking up some business," said Jobe Moss, a broker with MCM Inc in Lubbock, Texas, adding that the dollar's strength tempered cotton's gains.
A stronger greenback pressures dollar-traded commodities like cotton by making them more expensive to holders of other currencies. Cotton contracts for July settled up by 0.01 cent on Tuesday at 63.31 cents per pound. It traded within a range of 63.27 and 64.66 cents a pound. Total futures market volume rose by 3,530 to 26,509 lots. Data showed total open interest gained 1,555 to 188,827 contracts in the previous session.
Certificated cotton stocks deliverable as of May 22 totalled 116,375 480-lb bales, up from 112,543 in the previous session. The dollar index was up 1.34 percent. The Thomson Reuters CoreCommodity CRB Index, which tracks 19 commodities, was down 1.70 percent. Speculators cut their net long position to 35,641 from 41,283 in the latest week. The Relative Strength Index in the most-active contract rose to 39.838.