NEW YORK: U.S. cotton futures rose on Monday on technical buying support and demand from cotton millers, rebounding from losses in three past sessions.
Trading volumes were, light as investors awaited monthly supply-demand data due on Friday from the U.S. Department of Agriculture.
"We're kind of in a holding pattern here to some degree, waiting for that report to come out," said Sharon Johnson, senior cotton analyst at KCG Futures, a division of commodities broker Knight Capital, in Roswell, Georgia.
Market activity was also light with many traders attending the Cotton Beltwide conference in New Orleans, the annual gathering of U.S. cotton farmers.
U.S. cotton's front-month contract, March, settled up 0.69 cent, or 0.8 percent.
Trading volume amounted to below 13,600 lots, about 40 percent lower than the market's 30-day norm, Thomson Reuters data showed.
March cotton lost about 2 percent of its value over the past three sessions in a technical selloff sparked by its surge to an October high on the last day of 2013.
Sentiment was further hit by exports data on Friday showing net upland sales of U.S. cotton for the week to Dec. 26 down 61 percent.
Some felt the market had oversold in that three-day stretch.
"I do think some of today's rebound was technical," Johnson said. "I also think we ran into some commercial buying by the way of mills."
Cotton had finished 2013 up 13 percent as speculators renewed their interest in fiber, even as the broader commodities sector sold off and money flowed toward equities.
Earlier last year, speculators had boosted their bullish stance in fiber to a five-year high, betting that demand in top consumer China would offset global oversupply.
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