NYCE cotton futures closed with steep losses on Tuesday, as small speculators and locals grabbed fast profits following the precipitous gains of late last week, traders said.
But they added that the selling was carried out on light volume and trade and funds came in to buy at the lows.
"Trade bought it really hard at the lows. There wasn't any really heavy fund selling, either. But the volume was horrible.
You can't read too much into the prices being lower when there is pitiful volume," said Alan Feild of iamhedged.com in Memphis, Tennessee.
Traders said a lot of the selling was profit taking by small speculative commission houses and locals.
May cotton tumbled 2.80 cent to finish at 70.73 cents a lb. after trading between 70.53 and 72.90 cents per lb. March futures fell 1.85 cent to close at 69.90.
The rest of the board lost 1.12 to 2.00 cents by the end. "If there is a commitment to sell the market by the funds, it did not show up today.
Locals sold more than funds today. There was some liquidation, maybe due to the dollar," he said.
The dollar stormed higher on Tuesday, pushing the euro to its biggest ever one-day loss as the greenback rallied upon growing expectations for strong US jobs growth, which sparked a breach of key technical support levels.
"The dollar probably had something to do with it. It could be that some of the non-US buyers have backed off," said John Flanagan of broker Flanagan Trading Corp.
Some traders pointed out that recent news China was planning to approve extra cotton import quotas of 500,000 to a million additional tonnes in 2004 should limit the selling.