ICE cotton hit a more than seven-month high on Thursday after a US government report showed export sales for the current crop were above the prior four-week average, signaling strong demand for high-quality US cotton. "There is a finite supply of high-grade cotton," said Keith Brown, proprietor and cotton trader at Keith Brown and Co in Moultrie, Georgia.
Cotton contracts for July settled up by 0.79 cent on Thursday, a 1.2 percent gain, to 67.88 cents per pound. It traded within a range of 67.30 and 68.07 cents a pound, the highest level since September 12, 2014. Weekly export sales rose for the 2014/15 crop reached 124,200 bales, down 14 percent from the previous week but up significantly from the prior four-week average.
The front month's premium to the second-month increased to 0.24 cent per pound. * Total futures market volume rose by 12,938 to 31,303 lots. Data showed total open interest gained 3,886 to 186,383 contracts in the previous session. Certificated cotton stocks deliverable as of April 29 totaled 80,778 480-lb bales, up from 78,624 in the previous session. The dollar index was down 0.33 percent. The Thomson Reuters CoreCommodity CRB Index, which tracks 19 commodities, was up 0.97 percent. The Relative Strength Index in the most-active contract rose to 67.702.
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