ICE cotton futures settled flat after trading in a tight range on Friday, but prices for the natural fiber scored their biggest weekly percentage gain in seven weeks. Cotton contracts for December settled up 0.01 cent, or 0.01 percent, at 68.2 cents per lb. It traded within a range of 67.8, its lowest since Oct. 23, to 68.49 cents a lb.
The contract rose 2 percent for the week, its biggest weekly gain since the week of Sept. 9. On Monday, it registered the biggest daily percentage gain on concerns of crop damage due to freezing weather forecasts in Texas. However, the weather worries have since waned, leading to a 1.6 percent decline in the contract on Thursday.
Around 250,000 bales of US cotton production are likely at risk from the freezing weather concerns in Texas, said Louis Rose, co-founder and director of research and analytics at Rose Commodity, in a note, noting that other estimates were significantly higher. "Today was a slow day. Right now there's no weather concerns, but that could change," said Gabriel Crivorot, analyst at Societe Generale in New York.
Earlier on Friday, the International Cotton Advisory Committee (ICAC) said it increased its cotton inventory forecasts for the 2017-18 crop year. It raised its forecast for ending stocks to 18.89 million tonnes from 18.7 million tonnes previously. "When we look at the market from a longer-term perspective, we notice that December has spent the last 4-1/2 months, or most of the growing season, in a relatively tight range," said Peter Egli, director of risk management at British merchant Plexus Cotton, in a note.
"In doing so, December has shown relative strength, because crop estimates have turned decisively more bearish since the June report." Cotton crop losses from Hurricane Harvey in major producing state Texas were estimated at about $100 million, economists at Texas A&M AgriLife Extension Service said in a statement on Friday.
"200,000 bales of cotton lint on the stalk valued at $62.4 million was lost and another 200,000 harvested bales valued at $9.6 million had degraded quality," they said. "In addition, there were widespread losses of cottonseed." Speculators raised their net long position by 173 contracts to 48,922 in week to Oct. 24, Commodity Futures Trading Commission data showed.
Total futures market volume fell by 2,860 to 20,612 lots. Data showed total open interest fell 1,438 to 231,362 contracts in the previous session. Certificated cotton stocks deliverable as of Oct. 26 totalled 2,031 480-lb bales, down from 2,047 in the previous session. The dollar index was up 0.27 percent. The Thomson Reuters CoreCommodity CRB Index, which tracks 19 commodities, rose 0.51 percent.
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