ICE cotton futures crawled higher on Tuesday in muted trading as investors remained cautious ahead of federal data on agricultural demand and supply due later this week. "There was not much buying or selling today," said Gabriel Crivorot, analyst at Societe Generale in New York. The US government's world agriculture supply and demand (WASDE) report is due on Thursday.
Funds which have actively increased their net long positions in the past few days are probably waiting for the WASDE report before deciding on what action to take, Crivorot added. The March cotton contract on ICE Futures US settled up 0.2 cent, or 0.27 percent, at 73.19 cents per lb. It traded within a range of 72.82 and 73.7 cents a lb. Total futures market volume fell by 3,436 to 24,413 lots. Data showed total open interest gained 1,197 to 262,699 contracts in the previous session.