ICE cotton futures rose slightly on Friday, snapping a three session losing streak on a weaker dollar, offsetting losses from recent export sales cancellations, increasing acreage and favourable weather for the natural fibre. Favourable weather in top growing regions and export cancellations from India and China along with optimistic acreage expectations by the US Department of Agriculture put pressure on prices.
"Fundamentally nothing has necessarily changed," said Jim Lambert, director of sales at FCStone Merchant Services, noting that the market is seeing a bit of consolidation after extreme price swings earlier this week. The July cotton contract on ICE futures US fell about 3.3 percent this week after prices touched near three-year highs earlier in the week.
The July cotton contract on ICE Futures US settled up 0.21 cent, or 0.27 percent, at 79.45 cents per lb. It traded within a range of 78.42 and 79.5 cents a lb. The dollar index was down 0.75 percent. The Thomson Reuters CoreCommodity CRB Index, which tracks 19 commodities, was up 1.41 percent. Certificated cotton stocks deliverable as of 18MAY 2017 totalled 402,998 480-lb bales, up from 387,267 in the previous session. Total futures market volume rose by 1,120 to 28,463 lots. Data showed total open interest fell 4,565 to 258,288 contracts in the previous session. Speculators raised their net long position in cotton in the week to May 16 by 9,464 contracts, to 105,674, US Commodity Futures Trading Commission data showed on Friday.