Cotton futures surged on Monday to their highest single-session gains in two weeks, lifted by a weaker dollar and end-user buying at low price levels and bucking a rout across most commodities. Still, prices remained within the same tight range they have been trading in for months.
"They're not chasing it higher," said Chris Kramedjian, a risk management consultant with INTL FCStone in Nashville, Tennessee, noting that physical buying evaporated at the upper end of the day's range. "We're still in the middle of the range." March cotton on ICE Futures US settled up 0.66 cent, or 1.1 percent, at 61.79 cents per lb. It traded within a range of 60.85 and 62.00 cents a lb. Total futures market volume rose by 1,696 to 38,571 lots. Data showed total open interest gained 2,648 to 198,357 contracts in the previous session.
Certificated cotton stocks deliverable as of January 29 totalled 27,784 480-lb bales, down from 28,706 in the previous session. The dollar index was down 0.59 percent. The Thomson Reuters CoreCommodity CRB Index, which tracks 19 commodities, was down 1.96 percent. Speculators cut their net long position to 18,555 lots from 22,806 lots in the latest week. The Relative Strength Index in the most-active contract rose to 46.363.