ICE cotton futures rose for the fourth straight session on Thursday to hit a fresh three-week high as the market remained wary of the impact of Tropical Storm Harvey, which caused catastrophic flooding in top cotton producing state Texas. Cotton contracts for December settled up 0.08 cent, or 0.11 percent, at 70.93 cents per lb. Prices earlier touched 71.08 cents a lb, the highest level since August 10.
"There are concerns in the market about the quality of the (cotton) crop," said Peter Egli, director of risk management at British merchant Plexus Cotton. Harvey, which has weakened to a depression, continues to cause catastrophic and life-threatening flooding in southeastern Texas and portions of southwestern Louisiana.
"Flooding from swelling rivers and bayous across southeast Texas continues to cause problems and it certainly seems possible that increased cotton losses could ultimately occur," Louis Rose, co-founder and director of research and analytics at Rose Commodity Group said in a note. Earlier in the day, the US Department of Agriculture reported net upland sales of 230,700 running bales for the 2017/2018 marketing year in its weekly export sales report.
Total futures market volume fell by 4,594 to 21,636 lots. Data showed total open interest gained 814 to 225,781 contracts in the previous session. Certificated cotton stocks deliverable as of August 30 totaled 9,473 480-lb bales, down from 9,832 in the previous session. The dollar index was down 0.25 percent. The Thomson Reuters CoreCommodity CRB Index, which tracks 19 commodities, was up 2.25 percent.
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