Cotton futures dipped on Friday, stabilizing above the prior session's low as the price reached technically oversold territory and physical buying picked up with prices near three-month lows. "A lot of people are fixing here every step down," said Peter Egli, director of risk management at British merchant Plexus Cotton, adding that the calmer day in the stock markets of China, the top consumer of the fiber, prevented the kind of selloff that had plagued the cotton market the past two days.
March cotton on ICE Futures US settled down 0.03 cent, or 0.05 percent, at 61.40 cents per lb. It traded within a range of 61.31 and 61.90 cents a lb. The contract closed the week down 3 percent, its largest such loss since the week ended September 18.
Total futures market volume fell by 12,205 to 28,279 lots. Data showed total open interest gained 1,175 to 186,384 contracts in the previous session. Certificated cotton stocks deliverable as of January 7 totalled 64,142 480-lb bales, down from 64,249 in the previous session. The dollar index was up 0.30 percent. The Thomson Reuters CoreCommodity CRB Index, which tracks 19 commodities, was up 0.02 percent. The Relative Strength Index in the most-active contract remained unchanged at 35.8, close to oversold territory.