ICE cotton fell during the settlement period on Wednesday but remained within the prior session's trading range in light volume as traders hesitated to take large positions ahead of the US government supply and demand report expected Friday. "People are keeping their powder dry," said Chris Kramedjian, a risk management consultant with INTL FCStone in Memphis, Tennessee, noting that last month's unexpectedly bullish crop report caught many traders by surprise.
December cotton on ICE Futures US settled down by 0.36 cent on Wednesday, a 0.6 percent loss, at 62.92 cents per pound. It traded within a range of 62.86 and 63.63 cents a pound. Total futures market volume fell by 6,196 to 10,484 lots. Data showed total open interest gained 661 to 179,675 contracts in the previous session.
Certificated cotton stocks deliverable as of September 8 totaled 60,221 480-lb bales, down from 61,348 in the previous session. The dollar index was up 0.05 percent. The Thomson Reuters CoreCommodity CRB Index, which tracks 19 commodities, was down 1.31 percent. The Relative Strength Index in the most active contract fell to 43.380.