ICE cotton futures fell for the seventh straight session on Monday after hitting near six-month lows in the previous session as investors continued liquidating on rising expectations of new harvest. "We have not had any significant problems in getting the crop growing," said Jobe Moss, a broker with MCM Inc in Lubbock, Texas. "The crop is in pretty good shape. There's a lot of cotton coming up."
The most-active December cotton contract on ICE futures US settled down 0.32 cent, or 0.46 percent, at 69.04 cents per lb. It traded within a range of 68.67 and 70.2 cents a lb. Prices fell to their lowest since December 20 at 68.58 cents per lb on Friday. "Prices at about six-, seven-month lows are not for buying ... speculators are still liquidating," Moss said.
The speculators cut a bullish stance in cotton 11,269 contracts to 70,485 contracts, the Commodity Futures Trading Commission data showed on Friday. The fourth straight weekly cut brought their net long position to the smallest in eight months. "Bullish signals are just not in the picture for now," O.A. Cleveland, consulting economist at Cotton Experts, wrote in a note. "The market is under the influence of Mother Nature and she continues to smile on the prospects for increased supply."
Further pressuring the commodity complex was a strong dollar. The Thomson Reuters CoreCommodity CRB Index, which tracks 19 commodities, was down 1.02 percent. The dollar index was up 0.40 percent. Total futures market volume fell by 20,714 to 25,769 lots. Data showed total open interest fell 17,188 to 215,054 contracts in the previous session. Certificated cotton stocks deliverable as of 16 June totalled 478,113 480-lb bales, up from 476,100 in the previous session.