Cotton futures fell to a four-month low on Friday, declining for the third straight session as commercial end-users held off on fixing cotton prices amid continued speculation China would soon announce a plan to auction off its massive cotton stockpile.
"Nobody wants to buy before the news is known," said Peter Egli, director of risk management with British merchant Plexus Cotton. March cotton on ICE Futures US settled down 0.26 cent, or 0.43 percent, at 59.97 cents per lb. It traded within a range of 59.83 and 60.59 cents a lb.
Total futures market volume fell by 2,728 to 55,428 lots. Data showed total open interest fell 347 to 199,654 contracts in the previous session. Certificated cotton stocks deliverable as of February 4 totalled 26,916 480-lb bales, up from 26,212 in the previous session. The dollar index was up 0.51 percent. The Thomson Reuters CoreCommodity CRB Index, which tracks 19 commodities, was down 0.93 percent.