ICE cotton up as US Fed decides to hold rates steady

Cotton futures rose slightly higher in late trading on Wednesday supported by the US Federal Reserve's announcement to keep interest rates unchanged. The Fed's statement indicating it was not in any hurry to raise rates gave speculators freedom to continue with their long positions, said Louis Rose, independent cotton trader and consultant with Risk Analytics in Memphis, Tennessee. While the Fed left the door open to a rate hike in June, its statement implied that it was in no hurry to follow on from its December rate rise.
The July cotton contract on ICE Futures US settled up 0.32 cent, or 0.50 percent, at 64.15 cents per lb. It traded within a range of 63.41 and 64.27 cents a lb. Total futures market volume fell by 4,347 to 20,666 lots. Data showed total open interest gained 304 to 191,716 contracts in the previous session. The dollar index was down 0.10 percent. The Thomson Reuters CoreCommodity CRB Index, which tracks 19 commodities, was up 0.55 percent.