New York cotton settles firm

NYCE cotton futures crawled to a firmer finish Wednesday on trade and speculative buying as players awaited tomorrow's weekly USDA export sales report, brokers said.
March settled 0.35 cent higher at 69.25 cents a lb after trading 68.70 to 69.90 cents. May added 0.44 to 71.27 cents and, except for one contract, distant months increased 0.05 to 0.50 cent.
"I guess we're just waiting for the sales (data)," said Joe Carney of brokers iamhedged.com in Memphis, Tennessee.
He said mixed buying from trade and speculative accounts gave the market a mild boost. "It's been a little bit of everything," said Carney, adding the ability of cotton to hold above the lower end of the range around 67 cents, basis March, should be "encouraging" for futures.
Looking toward the weekly USDA export sales report, cotton brokers said US net upland cotton sales would likely range from 200,000 to 500,000 running bales (RBs, 500-lbs each), up from the prior week's sales of 59,300 RBs.
Heavy buying believed done by Chinese importers hit the cotton futures market starting on Thursday last week. Brokers said the question in most of the trade is whether the bulk of those sales were reported to the USDA for this week's report.
Carney said any sales were done late in the week and he felt, as did most of the trade, that the bulk of sales to China would only be reported in next week's USDA sales report.
China has emerged as a major forced in the cotton market. Its heavy purchases last October sparked a rally, which lifted cotton futures to its highest level since late 1995.
According to the latest USDA figures, China has bought 3.271 million RBs of cotton so far in the 2003/04 marketing year (August/July), well above the 703,500 RBs the Asian giant had bought at this time last year.
Technically, brokers Flanagan Trading Corp said it pegged resistance in the March contract at 69.50 and 70.35 cents, with support at 69 and 68 cents.
Floor dealers said estimated final volume reached 12,500 lots from Tuesday's tally of 21,022 lots. Open interest rose 239 lots to 88,074 lots as of February 3.