Cotton futures finished marginally higher Thursday on modest speculative buying and the market will likely stay in a tight band before the weekend, analysts said. The New York Board of Trade's December cotton contract rose 0.28 cent to finish at 51.84 cents a lb, dealing from 50.90 to 51.90 cents. March added 0.30 to 54 cents.
Back months gained 0.15 to 0.60 cent. "We're stagnating down here," said Keith Brown, president of commodity trading firm Keith Brown and Co in Moultrie, Georgia.
He said the market may eventually probe the area near 50 cents to see if automatic sell orders would drag futures below that level.
Fundamentally, market players are waiting for crops to mature in the United States and in places like China, the world's biggest producer and consumer of cotton.
Futures hit its session high shortly after the start of trade, but interest faded and small speculators nudged the market down to its lows in a narrowly traded session, brokers said.
Late trade buying and speculative short-covering enabled cotton to post marginal gains, they said. "It's been real slow and I suspect we could be the same way tomorrow," one said.
Separately, traders said little attention was paid to the US Department of Agriculture's weekly export sales report that US cotton sales reached 169,700 running bales (RBs, 500-lbs each), below trade belief they would range from 200,000 to 300,000 RBs.
US cotton shipments of previously booked orders amounted to 340,700 RBs, versus 254,100 RBs last week. "We're near the end of this marketing year (August/July) so whatever sales there will likely be for next season," a broker said.
Broker Flanagan Trading Corp sees support in the December contract at 51.05 and 50.40 cents, with resistance at 51.85 and 52.85 cents.
Floor dealers said estimated volume came to 11,000 lots, down from Thursday's tally of 15,667 lots. Open interest fell 89 lots to 90,142 lots as of July 13.
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