ICE cotton futures rose on Thursday on weakness in the US dollar after a US government report showed export sales had risen modestly over the previous week, though prices remained within the range of the prior session. "Nobody is really comfortable with where we are right now, and so they're not willing to make any big bets," said Jobe Moss, a broker with MCM Inc in Lubbock, Texas, noting that market participants were waiting for clarity on the size of the next US crop in reports at the end of June and next month.
December cotton on ICE Futures US settled up by 0.2 cent on Thursday, a 0.3 percent gain, at 64.72 cents per pound. It traded within a range of 64.45 to 65.03 cents a pound.
The US Department of Agriculture's weekly export sales report showed net sales of 52,600 bales last week for the 2014/15 crop, up 21 percent from the prior week, and shipments of 209,000 bales, down 33 percent from the prior week. Total futures market volume fell by 9,978 to 18,537 lots. Data showed total open interest fell by 4,674 to 164,771 contracts in the previous session.
Certificated cotton stocks deliverable as of June 17 totalled 174,623 480-lb bales, unchanged from the previous session. The dollar index was down 0.32 percent. The Thomson Reuters CoreCommodity CRB Index, which tracks 19 commodities, was up 0.27 percent. The Relative Strength Index in the most active contract rose to 49.661.