ICE cotton futures were largely unchanged in subdued trading on Wednesday amid looming harvest pressure, ahead of weekly export data from the US Department of Agriculture. Cotton contracts for December settled down 0.14 cent, or 0.21 percent, at 67.63 cents per lb. It traded within a range of 67.54 and 68.17 cents a lb.
"It was a slow session today with people still waiting for the West Texas crop to finish as they want to know what the size and quality of the crop is going to be," said Peter Egli, director of risk management at British merchant Plexus Cotton. The US Department of Agriculture's (USDA) weekly crop progress report on Monday showed 30 percent of cotton crop was harvested in top cotton producing state Texas by the week ended Oct. 15, up from 27 percent in the previous week.
Overall in the United States, 31 percent of cotton crop was harvested, up from 25 percent in the previous week, according to the report. "On the production side the US harvest continues amid most favourable weather conditions," Louis Rose, co-founder and director of research and analytics at Rose Commodity said in a note.
Investors were awaiting the release of weekly US export sales data due on Thursday. Total futures market volume fell by 5,468 to 16,766 lots. Data showed total open interest gained 619 to 229,812 contracts in the previous session. Certificated cotton stocks deliverable as of Oct. 17 totalled 4,465 480-lb bales, down from 5,705 in the previous session. The Thomson Reuters CoreCommodity CRB Index, which tracks 19 commodities, was down 0.13 percent.
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