Benchmark cotton futures on ICE fell on Friday on pressure from a stronger dollar and weakness across the commodity markets, capping off a fourth straight weekly loss, the longest such streak for the second-month contract in nearly one year. "You've got a lot of funds rethinking their ownership of commodities in general," said Sharon Johnson, introducing broker with Wedbush Securities in Atlanta. "When those folks who are long cotton finally decide this isn't a good idea, you'll see this come unglued."
December cotton on ICE Futures US settled down by 0.1 cent on Friday, a 0.2 percent loss, at 64.64 cents per pound. It traded within a range of 64.16 and 64.95 cents. The second-month contract closed the week down 0.58 cent, or 0.1 percent, for its fourth straight weekly loss. That was its longest streak of weekly losses since the week ended August 1, 2014.
Total futures market volume fell by 38 to 11,978 lots. Data showed total open interest gained 792 to 176,974 contracts in the previous session. Certificated cotton stocks deliverable as of July 23 totaled 126,262 480-lb bales, down from 128,537 in the previous session. The dollar index was up 0.18 percent. The Thomson Reuters CoreCommodity CRB Index, which tracks 19 commodities, was down 0.94 percent. The Relative Strength Index in the most-active contract fell to 43.236.