Cotton futures finished higher Wednesday on trade and speculative buying while players braced for a pair of government reports being released this week to provide the market near-term direction, dealers said.
The New York Board of Trade's benchmark December cotton contract added 0.69 cent to end at 54.20 cents per lb, moving from 53.70 to 54.29 cents. Distant months increased from 0.60 to 0.80 cent.
Jobe Moss, an analyst for brokers and merchants MCM Inc in Lubbock, Texas, said very modest amounts of buying by the trade and small speculators buoyed values.
Analysts said there may be some tweaking of positions in cotton ahead of the release of the annual US Agriculture Department's plantings report on Friday.
Most market participants believe the USDA will keep its estimate of US cotton plantings this season near unchanged to a few million acres lower. In March, USDA pegged potential cotton sowings at 14.6 million acres.
"Weather-related concerns appear to be escalating in the US," according to a report by Sharon Johnson, cotton expert for First Capitol Group in Atlanta, Georgia. She added that other regions in the US cotton belt are also suffering.
The worst hit seems to be Texas. Moss said abandonment of cotton already sown "is going to be huge."
He said Texas will struggle to harvest a crop of 4.5 to 5.0 million (480-lb) bales, down sharply from last year's 8.3 million bales.
The other report would be Thursday's weekly USDA export sales data. Cotton brokers expect US cotton sales to range between 150,000 and 300,000 running bales (RBs, 500-lbs each), from sales last week of 223,000 RBs.
US cotton shipments were forecast at 350,000 to 450,000 RBs, versus last week's 394,600 RBs.
Brokers Flanagan Trading Corp put support in the December contract at 53.55 and 53 cents, with resistance at 54.75 and 55.10 cents. Floor dealers said estimated final volume reached 6,400 lots, versus the previous 7,250 lots. Open interest in the cotton market fell 1,789 to 159,009 contracts as of June 27.