Cotton futures fell a second straight day on Thursday on light speculative activity, with traders saying they were awaiting leads.
The New York Board of Trade's December cotton contract eased 0.42 cent to end at 54.86 cents per lb, moving from 55.55 to 54.76 cents. March shed 0.29 to close at 58.20 cents. Other contracts slipped 0.10 to 0.45 cent.
"It was pretty darn quiet," a cotton analyst at First Capitol Group in Atlanta said. "It was spec buying and trade selling all day through. It's definitely more definitive than this on some days."
Fundamentally, dealers said, focus remained on the drought afflicting large swathes of the US cotton belt, which has raised questions on the type of demand that may emerge for cotton as marketing year 2006/07 (August/July) gets under way.
The US Agriculture Department's weekly export sales data issued Wednesday put total US cotton sales at 79,300 running bales (RBs, 500-lbs each), from 75,400 RBs in last week's report.
US cotton shipments of previously booked orders stood at 246,000 RBs, sharply down from last week's 535,200 RBs.
Dealers said sales and shipments were slow as the 2006/07 marketing year (August/July) was just under way and the US cotton crop was maturing.
Floor sources said final estimated trading volume reached 7,500 lots, from the previous 7,000 lots. Open interest in the cotton market rose to 166,337 lots as of August 16 from 166,261 lots previously.