ICE cotton rose for the third straight session on Friday after an unexpectedly bullish US government supply and demand report from earlier in the week, but encountered resistance at the prior session's high as physical market activity remained cool. "We have a standoff: the mills don't want to pay these prices, and the growers wait for higher prices," said Peter Egli, director of risk management at British merchant Plexus Cotton Ltd.
December cotton on ICE Futures US settled up by 0.16 cent on Friday, a 0.2 percent gain, at 65.95 cents per pound. It traded within a range of 65.25 and 66.51 cents a pound. Total futures market volume fell by 31,750 to 20,826 lots. Data showed total open interest gained 765 to 185,597 contracts in the previous session. Certificated cotton stocks deliverable as of August 13 totalled 95,711 480-lb bales, down from 97,932 in the previous session. The dollar index was up 0.06 percent. The Thomson Reuters CoreCommodity CRB Index, which tracks 19 commodities, was up 0.07 percent. The Relative Strength Index in the most-active contract rose to 59.421.