Cotton up nearly 2 percent after four days of losses

ICE cotton futures rose about 2 percent on Friday, snapping four days of declines with help from the weather and weekly US export sales data amid a weaker dollar. The market factored in the "good" export sales data along with the rains in the West Texas, said Jordan Lea, chairman and co-owner of Eastern Trading in Greenville, South Carolina, adding that there also was a lot of short covering. Sales of upland cotton totalled 124,900 running bales in the most recent week, down 3 percent from a week earlier but up from the prior four-week average.
The dollar posted its largest one-day percentage fall against a basket of major currencies since February on Friday after a weak US jobs report cast doubt on whether the Federal Reserve would raise interest rates soon. The most-active December cotton contract on ICE Futures US settled up 1.24 cent, or 1.98 percent, at 63.91 cents per lb. It traded within a range of 62.81 and 63.95 cents a lb. The dollar index was down 1.67 percent. The Thomson Reuters CoreCommodity CRB Index, which tracks 19 commodities, was up 0.34 percent. Speculators boosted a net long stance in cotton by 9,923 contracts to a five-month high of 38,571 contracts, according to CFTC.