Cotton futures settled lower on Friday after a choppy trading session as the US government raised its forecast for domestic inventories. The US Department of Agriculture (USDA) cut its outlook for global inventories, largely on a decrease in inventories in China, the world's largest consumer. "China selling so much of their cotton is not good for the near-term, but longer term we're drawing the stocks down," said Louis Rose, independent cotton trader and consultant with Risk Analytics in Memphis, Tennessee.
Global inventories are forecast "still around 95 million bales. It's not going to be bullish," he added. The December cotton contract on ICE Futures US settled down 0.23 cent, or 0.35 percent, at 65.07 cents per lb. It traded within a range of 64.84 and 65.91 cents a lb. The dollar index was up 0.67 percent. The Thomson Reuters CoreCommodity CRB Index, which tracks 19 commodities, was down 1.14 percent.