ICE cotton futures fell to a three-week low on Monday as favourable planting conditions across major producing areas across the United States and the world raised prospects of better production. The July cotton contract on ICE Futures US settled down 0.75 percent at 77.19 cents per lb, after touching its lowest since April 17 at 77.05 cents earlier in the session.
"We've had really good weather in major planting countries. It has been particularly good in Texas, pretty good in China and moderate in India," said Gabriel Crivorot, analyst at Societe Generale in New York. "None of these places have had any large issues that could compromise crop mostly indicating that production could be higher than initially expected."
The US Department of Agriculture's World Agricultural Supply and Demand Estimates (WASDE) report is due on Wednesday. There is potential for very strong planting progress to be made this week, as weather conditions turned mostly warmer and dry across most US cotton producing regions over the weekend, Louis Rose, co-founder and director of research and analytics at Rose Commodity Group said in a note on Sunday. The July cotton contract on ICE Futures US settled down 0.58 cent, or 0.75 percent, at 77.19 cents per lb. It traded within a range of 77.05 and 77.77 cents a lb. Total futures market volume rose by 215 to 21,359 lots. Data showed total open interest fell 1,653 to 261,375 contracts in the previous session. The dollar index was up 0.45 percent.