Cotton futures settled higher on modest buying by small speculators as operators awaited release of an industry plantings survey later Friday, brokers said. New York Board of Trade's March cotton contract closed up 0.32 cent at 53.89 cents per lb after trading 53.50 to 54.10 cents. May rose 0.30 to 54.87 cents and the rest added 0.25 to 0.43 cent.
The IntercontinentalExchange's NYBOT electronic market for cotton was doing modest business with most of the action in the March contract and in new-crop December cotton. The March electronic contract was seen at 54 cents at 2:30 pm EST (1930 GMT), dealing from 53.50 to 54.04 cents.
"I don't think anybody's going out on a limb before that report," said Mike Stevens, an analyst for brokers SFS Futures in Mandeville, Louisiana. The main industry group National Cotton Council was due to release after 4:00 pm its annual survey of potential cotton plantings at its yearly meeting in Austin, Texas.
Most analysts believe the NCC will cut US 2007 cotton sowings by 1.5 to 2.0 million acres from total plantings in 2006 of 15.276 million. Sharp rallies in grains prices are expected to tempt many US farmers to plant corn and soybeans instead of cotton, they said.
Futures opened at its low for the session and then gradually gained as speculators bought the market. In electronic trading for cotton, dealings were seen as modest with most of the action in the spot March contract and the new-crop December cotton contract. Brokers Flanagan Trading Corp put resistance in March cotton at 54.10 and 54.50 cents, with support at 53.60 and 53.10 cents.
Floor dealers said final estimated cotton volume in open outcry stood at 16,000 lots, down from the prior tally of 23,475 contracts. Open interest fell 633 lots to 191,241 lots as of February 1.