ICE cotton futures slipped on Friday as investors booked profits from the previous session's rally to three-month highs, which helped prices mark their fifth straight weekly gain.
The front-month cotton contract on ICE Futures US, settled down 0.6 cent, or 0.8 percent, at 76.58 cents per lb.
"This is what normally happens with short-covering rallies, especially when specs are short," said Louis Rose, director of research and analytics at Tennessee-based Rose Commodity Group.
"May open interest has been falling like a rock as prices have moved higher, which signal that they are not being replaced by new longs." However, the contract notched a weekly gain of 1.4 percent, its fifth consecutive weekly gain, having jumped more than 2 percent in the previous session on concerns of crop damage due to adverse weather in the US Midwest.
On the technical front, resistance lay around the 82 cents level, while 72 cents offered support, said Jon Marcus, president of the Lakefront Futures and Options brokerage firm in Chicago, adding prices could climb further from current levels going forward. Market participants are continuing to keep a close eye on developments on the trade front, with a fresh round of trade talks between the United States and China scheduled next week.
Total futures market volume fell by 10,304 to 32,984 lots. Data showed total open interest fell 154 to 223,307 contracts in the previous session.
Certificated cotton stocks deliverable as of March 21 totalled 59,070 480-lb bales, down from 106,796 in the previous session.
Meanwhile, speculators trimmed their net short positions in cotton by 10,210 contracts to 11,769 contracts in the week to March 19, US Commodity Futures Trading Commission data showed.
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