ICE cotton futures were little changed on Thursday with the market moving deeper into a normal carry structure as the harvest progressed and traders awaited fundamental news from the US government's supply and demand report expected next week. The December contract's discount to the March contract widened to as much as 0.20 cent, its largest since June 18, as the prospect of cotton from the current harvest coming onto the market has reduced nearby supply concerns.
"You're pushing out demand from the mill side," said Bob Champion, a cotton merchant with Loeb & Company in Montgomery, Alabama, noting that several consumers had fulfilled their nearby needs. Cotton contracts for December settled up 0.01 cent, or less than 0.1 percent, at 61.95 cents per lb. It traded within a range of 61.76 and 62.30 cents.
US export sales totalled 147,200 bales last week for cotton from the 2015/16 harvest, up 94 percent from the previous week and 32 percent from the prior 4-week average. Total futures market volume fell by 17,599 to 28,713 lots. Data showed total open interest fell 5,272 to 194,055 contracts in the previous session. Certificated cotton stocks deliverable as of Nov. 4 totalled 41,975 480-lb bales, down from 42,352 in the previous session. The dollar index was down 0.01 percent. The Thomson Reuters CoreCommodity CRB Index, which tracks 19 commodities, was down 0.88 percent.