ICE cotton prices retreated on Thursday as rains eased in key growing regions of the United States during the harvest and weak demand weighed. "Buyers aren't chasing this market," said Jobe Moss, a broker with MCM Inc in Lubbock Texas. "The key thing is there's just no business." Weekly US government export data was due Friday, delayed due to the Veteran's Day holiday on Wednesday.
March cotton on ICE Futures US settled down 0.15 cent, or 0.24 percent, at 62.16 cents per lb. It traded within a tight range of 62.03 and 62.70 cents a lb. The cash to second-month spread fell 0.22 cent to 0.42 cents per lb. Certificated cotton stocks deliverable as of Wednesday totalled 47,081 480-lb bales, up from 45,841 in the previous session.
The US dollar index was down 0.32 percent. The Thomson Reuters CoreCommodity CRB Index, which tracks 19 commodities, was down 1.02 percent. ICE cotton rose on Wednesday as rains and foggy weather have prevented harvesting in portions of the US cotton belt for several days, though the trading range was tight and the price traded entirely within the prior session's high and low. "People are still a little bit concerned about the size of the crop with all this weather, but we're just floating back to the top of the range," said Ron Lee, general manager at McCleskey Cotton in Bronwood, Georgia.