ICE cotton futures settled higher for the first time this week in narrow range trading on Wednesday, as investors remained cautious ahead of the US Department of Agriculture's (USDA) crop acreage report later this week. The most active cotton contract on ICE Futures US, the third-month December contract, settled up 0.36 cent, or 0.43 percent, at 84.87 cents per lb. It traded within a range of 84.19 and 84.99 cents a lb.
"The market's been very quiet today... As far as big move is concerned people are waiting for Friday's acreage numbers from the USDA and that's what is keeping the lid on this market," said Jon Marcus, president of the Lakefront Futures and Options brokerage firm in Chicago. The USDA's US weekly cotton export sales data is due on Thursday, while the annual crop acreage report is scheduled to be released on Friday.
"For cotton, the acreage report will likely be viewed as neutral to supportive, with any forerunning of the July WASDE report associated with updated acreage figures likely to be supportive to bullish," Louis Rose, director of research and analytics at Tennessee-based Rose Commodity said in a note.
Total futures market volume fell by 3,989 to 9,830 lots. Data showed total open interest fell 1,584 to 257,237 contracts in the previous session. Certificated cotton stocks deliverable as of June 26 totalled 92,009 480-lb bales, up from 88,762 in the previous session.
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