ICE cotton futures fell for the second straight session on Tuesday, as forecasts for dry weather in leading US growing regions allowed for harvesting to continue after recent rains, and bearish demand sentiment weighed on prices. "Texas is back in the fields, Georgia's back in the fields," said Jim Lambert, director of sales at FCStone Merchant Services in Nashville, Tennessee, noting that one of the major takeaways of a large industry conference last week was weak demand from overseas buyers and the absence of many buyers from top consumer China.
December cotton on ICE Futures US settled down by 0.72 cent on Tuesday, a 1.1 percent loss, at 62.57 cents per pound. It traded within a range of 62.52 and 63.85 cents a pound. In its second day of trading, ICE's world cotton contract saw 109 lots for May 2016 delivery change hands, up from 21 the prior session. It settled down 0.2 percent at 71.10 cents a lb. Total futures market volume rose by 4,107 to 32,264 lots. Data showed total open interest fell 30 to 199,706 contracts in the previous session.
Certificated cotton stocks deliverable as of November 2 totalled 43,216 480-lb bales, down from 46,140 in the previous session. The dollar index was up 0.25 percent. The Thomson Reuters CoreCommodity CRB Index, which tracks 19 commodities, was up 1.36 percent. The Relative Strength Index in the most-active contract fell to 49.397.