Cotton futures finished higher Wednesday on modest speculative buying as the market was again pinned in a band while waiting for leads from a pair of government reports, brokers said.
The New York Board of Trade's key December cotton contract rose 0.86 cent to end at 53.91 cents a lb, trading from 52.80 to 53.95 cents. March gained 0.81 to 55.49 cents. One contract aside, the rest added 0.20 to 0.90 cent.
Fundamentally, the market will monitor the harvest of the US cotton crop and waiting for next week's release of the monthly supply/demand report from the US Department of Agriculture to see what kind of demand there is for cotton. The USDA data are due out next Tuesday.
"We're just like a pendulum," said Keith Brown, president of commodity firm Keith Brown and Co in Moultrie, Georgia. "We'd be down 100 (points) and then up 100. We're just see-sawing."
Mike Stevens, an analyst for SFS Futures in Mandeville, Louisiana, said the market has not abandoned its pattern of the past week or so "reversing direction every day for the last seven or eight (sessions)."
Analysts said the current pattern will likely persist until the USDA production data is released.
For now, brokers said the market will be looking toward the USDA's weekly export sales report where they expect US cotton sales to range from 200,000 to 275,000 running bales (RBs, 500-lbs each), versus last week's sales of 248,400 RBs.
US cotton shipments of previously booked orders were seen ranging from 200,000 to 250,000 RBs, against last week's 208,400 RBs.
Brokers Flanagan Trading Corp sees resistance in December cotton at 54.10 and 54.50 cents, with support at 53.25 and 52.65 cents. Floor dealers said estimated final volume amounted to 7,000 lots, off from Tuesday's tally of 7,355 lots. Open interest fell 419 lots to 110,391 contracts as of October 4.
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