ICE cotton gained on Friday to end the week up after a sharp drop the prior session on news top consumer China would begin releasing its massive stockpile, as some investors covered short positions. "There might be some short-term guys that were short on the news and took some profit ahead of the weekend," said Louis Rose, independent cotton trader and analyst with Risk Analytics in Memphis, Tennessee.
December cotton on ICE Futures US settled up by 0.28 cent on Friday, a 0.4 percent gain, to 64.66 cents per pound. It traded within a range of 64.29 and 65.3 cents a pound. The most-active third-month ended the week up 0.2 percent. December cotton's premium to July cotton fell to 0.59 cent a lb, down from 0.85 cent a lb the prior session. Total futures market volume fell by 6,833 to 37,499 lots. Data showed total open interest gained 159 to 179,769 contracts in the previous session.
Certificated cotton stocks deliverable as of June 11 totaled 163,916 480-lb bales, up from 162,007 in the previous session. The dollar index was down 0.06 percent. The Thomson Reuters CoreCommodity CRB Index, which tracks 19 commodities, was down 0.79 percent. The Relative Strength Index in the most-active contract rose to 49.072.