Cotton futures settled firmer on Wednesday on a late flurry of speculative fund buying into buy-stop orders in modest volume, traders said. "It was pretty slow today with estimated volume at around 8,000 lots. Basically, half of the volume came in the last 45 minutes of trade," said one floor dealer.
The New York Board of Trade's active December cotton contract shot up 1.16 cents to finish the day at 55.15 cents a lb, moving from 53.85 to 55.65 cents. Spot July gained 1.45 cents to 50.80 cents and the rest of the board closed 1.10 to 1.90 cents firmer.
"There were a bunch of (buy) stops giving off an odor above 55 cents and everybody could smell it and so they started gunning for it," said one broker, adding that the trade were sellers, scale-up.
Analysts will be looking toward a pair of US Department of Agriculture reports that are due out on Thursday.
One is the USDA's plantings report, which will outline actual acreage sown to cotton in the United States.
Sharon Johnson, cotton expert for First Capitol Group in Atlanta, said she forecast US cotton plantings at 13.97 million acres. Last year, cotton sowings reached 13.659 million acres.
Johnson said the range of estimates amounted to 13.7 million to 14.3 million acres.
Looking toward the US Department of Agriculture's weekly export sales data, cotton brokers said they estimate US cotton sales ranging from 150,000 to 250,000 running bales (RBs, 500-lbs each), against sales of 237,900 RBs last week.
They said US cotton shipments of previously booked orders should range from 250,000 to 350,000 RBs, compared with last week's shipments of 268,500 RBs.
Brokers Flanagan Trading Corp. pegged support in the December contract at 53.90 and 53.10 cents, with resistance at 55.60 and 56.10 cents.
Floor dealers said estimated volume hit 8,000 lots, compared with the previous tally of 8,389 lots. Open interest in the market fell 356 lots to 88,242 lots as of June 29.