ICE cotton futures fell in light volume on Wednesday after a sharp rally the prior session, as extensive short-covering on Tuesday left fewer buyers in the market ahead of a weekly US export sales report due on Thursday. "They had levels at which they wanted to cover ahead of the report," said Louis Rose, independent cotton trader and analyst with Risk Analytics in Memphis, Tennessee, noting that he expected a strong report due to low prices and a weaker US dollar the prior week. "There wasn't that much left to do."
Cotton contracts for December settled down 0.45 cent on Wednesday, a 0.7 percent loss, at 64.52 cents per pound. It traded within a range of 64.16 and 65.16 cents a pound. Total futures market volume fell by 19,528 to 21,445 lots. Data showed total open interest fell 3,012 to 169,445 contracts in the previous session. Certificated cotton stocks deliverable as of June 16 totalled 174,623 480-lb bales, up from 172,591 in the previous session. The dollar index was down 0.58 percent. The Thomson Reuters CoreCommodity CRB Index, which tracks 19 commodities, was down 0.12 percent. The Relative Strength Index in the most-active contract fell to 49.846.