ICE cotton futures edged lower on Monday as investors remained guarded amid an ongoing trade conflict between world's biggest cotton exporter United States and top consumer China.
The most active cotton contract on ICE Futures US, the third-month December contract, settled down 0.38 cent, or 0.45 percent, at 84.92 cents per lb. It traded within a range of 84.4 and 86.22 cents a lb.
The third month contract fell about 5 percent last week in its biggest weekly decline since mid-September as trade tensions escalated between United States and China.
"After the kind of moves we had in cotton (due to tariffs dispute), you would expect to see a market that is capable of moving higher for recovery trade. That has not been developing so far," said Jack Scoville, vice president with Price Futures Group in Chicago.
"It (trade dispute) has kept people from doing a heck of a lot here. It will continue to weigh on the market," Scoville said, adding "there was some rain in the Texas panhandle. That's part of what's going on over there."
The US Treasury Department is drafting curbs that would block firms with at least 25 percent Chinese ownership from buying US companies with "industrially significant technology," a government official briefed on the matter said on Sunday.
US Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin said on Monday that forthcoming investment restrictions from the department will not be specific to China but would apply "to all countries that are trying to steal our technology."
Total futures market volume fell by 1,695 to 16,496 lots. Data showed total open interest fell 2,664 to 259,282 contracts in the previous session. Certificated cotton stocks deliverable as of June 22 totalled 86,072 480-lb bales, up from 86,067 in the previous session.
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