ICE cotton futures fell for the second straight session on Thursday as US producers took advantage of prices near 1-month highs to lock in sales as the harvest picked up in the world's top exporter. Prices surged earlier in the week on concerns about rain damage to South Carolina's crop and a delayed reaction to a reduction in the US government's output projection, but traders noted that overseas demand remained limited and producers still had a significant amount of fibre to sell.
"Now we're just coming back to reality," said Keith Brown, a Moultrie, Georgia-based cotton trader. December cotton on ICE Futures US settled down by 0.32 cent on Thursday, a 0.5 percent loss, to 63.44 cents per pound. It traded within a range of 63.15 and 63.76 cents a pound.
Certificated cotton stocks deliverable as of October 14 totalled 42,922 480-lb bales, down from 43,222 in the previous session. The dollar index was up 0.48 percent. The Thomson Reuters CoreCommodity CRB Index, which tracks 19 commodities, was down 0.42 percent. The Relative Strength Index in the most-active contract fell to 60.145.