Cotton futures settled higher on Wednesday, making the biggest gain in more than a week, on a short-covering rally ahead of the US government's planting intentions report on Thursday. "This is just short covering and book scoring up ahead of tomorrow's acreage figure," said Jobe Moss, a broker with MCM Inc in Lubbock, Texas. The front-month May contract on ICE Futures US settled up 0.29 cent, or 0.51 percent, at 57.67 cents per lb after hitting a high of 57.92 cents.
The dollar index was down 0.37 percent. The Thomson Reuters CoreCommodity CRB Index, which tracks 19 commodities, was down 0.29 percent. Total futures market volume rose by 11,620 to 26,504 lots. Data showed total open interest gained 1,122 to 216,510 contracts in the previous session.