ICE cotton futures rose to a one-month high on Wednesday, posting their largest single-day gains in six weeks, as forecasts for rains with the potential to disrupt harvest in Texas, the top-producing state, prompted short-covering. "We're looking at some pretty bad weather in West Texas," said Louis Rose, independent cotton trader and consultant with Risk Analytics in Memphis, Tennessee, adding that the move above 62.50 cents a lb appeared to trigger buy-stops, exaggerating the session's gains.
March cotton on ICE Futures US settled up 1.34 cent, or 2.16 percent, at 63.28 cents per lb, after trading as high as 63.66 cents a lb, the highest since October 22. That marked the sharpest single-day gain since October 13. Total futures market volume rose by 17,445 to 30,361 lots. Data showed total open interest fell 1,231 to 170,519 contracts in the previous session.
Certificated cotton stocks deliverable as of November 24 totalled 59,771 480-lb bales, up from 59,664 in the previous session. The dollar index was up 0.30 percent. The Thomson Reuters CoreCommodity CRB Index, which tracks 19 commodities, was up 0.23 percent. The Relative Strength Index in the most-active contract rose to 56.713.