ICE cotton futures rose for the third straight session on Wednesday, with traders rolling long positions forward to the March contract as the December contract's first notice day approached, pushing the contango, or the discount of the December 2015 to March 2016, to its sharpest ever.
"We're liquidating the December contract," said Michael Quinn, president and chief executive officer of Carolinas Cotton Growers Co-operative. "People who are long on the December are being more aggressive on moving out than those who are short." March Cotton on ICE Futures US settled up 0.27 cent, or 0.43 percent, at 62.94 cents per lb. It traded within a range of 62.66 and 63.12 cents a lb.
The December contract's discount to March, a market condition known as contango, widened to as much as 1.43 cents per lb, a life-of-contract high for the spread. Total futures market volume fell by 16,118 to 21,076 lots. Data showed total open interest fell 5,888 to 176,397 contracts in the previous session. Certificated cotton stocks deliverable as of November 17 totalled 54,847 480-lb bales, up from 53,208 in the previous session. The dollar index was up 0.01 percent. The Thomson Reuters CoreCommodity CRB Index, which tracks 19 commodities, was down 0.06 percent. The Relative Strength Index in the most-active contract rose to 55.56.
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