ICE cotton dipped on Wednesday after hovering near one-month highs hit the prior session as data showed strong US harvest progress despite difficulties in storm-battered regions. US Department of Agriculture data released Tuesday after the market close showed that more than half the cotton in South Carolina, which was battered by rains associated with Hurricane Joaquin, was of poor or very poor quality.
Last week, just 12 percent of the state's cotton was classified as poor or very poor. Traders said the rains likely did not have much impact on the overall size of the state's crop but said it could have a significant impact on quality. "South Carolina is pretty much a write-off at this point. Not that they're not going to get the bales; but they're not going to get much out of it quality-wise," said Peter Egli, director of risk management at British merchant Plexus Cotton.
Still, the quality was not significantly reduced in Georgia, North Carolina or Virginia, which have also been hit by the storm to varying degrees, and the overall quality designation throughout the country remained stable. Data released Wednesday morning showed imports from China, the world's leading consumer of cotton, were down 42 percent from the prior year, according to the China Cotton Association.
December cotton on ICE Futures US settled down by 0.1 cent on Wednesday, a 0.2 percent loss, at 63.76 cents per pound. It traded within a range of 63.41 and 64.08 cents a pound. Certificated cotton stocks deliverable as of October 13 totalled 43,222 480-lb bales, down from 43,224 in the previous session. The dollar index was down 0.79 percent. The Thomson Reuters CoreCommodity CRB Index, which tracks 19 commodities, was up 0.18 percent. The Relative Strength Index in the most-active contract fell to 63.133.