Cotton futures hit their highest level in more than two weeks on Thursday, on a weaker dollar and follow-through buying after a bullish World Agricultural Supply and Demand Estimates (WASDE) report pushed prices up over 3 percent on Wednesday. "Overnight, we did have some profit taking, but buyers came back in," said Keith Brown, principal at cotton brokers Keith Brown and Co in Moultrie, Georgia.
The December cotton contract registered its biggest single-day gain in three weeks on Wednesday, after the US Department of Agriculture lowered its projections for inventories by the end of the 2016/17 crop year amid a forecast for higher demand. Further upward movement could have been limited as the cotton fibre market awaited weekly export sales data from the USDA on Friday, traders noted.
The December cotton contract on ICE Futures US settled up 0.34 cent, or 0.49 percent, at 69.31 cents per lb. It traded within a range of 68.4 and 70.05 cents a lb., the highest level since September 27. The dollar index was down 0.43 percent. The Thomson Reuters CoreCommodity CRB Index, which tracks 19 commodities, was up 0.57 percent. China next year may match its 2016 sales from state cotton reserves to help plug a growing deficit in supply, an influential trade website quoted a government official as saying.