ICE cotton inched up on Friday as investors covered their shorts on colder weather forecasts in top US producing region, Texas. "Prices have most likely edged up on some short covering ahead of rain (up to about 7 inches or 18 cm of accumulation) and unseasonably cool temperatures moving across West Texas over the weekend," said Louis Rose, co-founder and director of research and analytics at Rose Commodity.
Cotton contracts for December settled up 0.21 cent, or 0.31 percent, at 68.46 cents per lb. It traded within a range of 67.86 and 68.77 cents a lb. During the session, prices dipped below the key 68 cents to touch 67.86 cents a lb, its lowest since August 25. "We have seen significant mill on-call fixation the last time prices were below the 68.00 cents level," Rose noted.
Despite having settled higher for the day, prices for the natural fibre fell about 1 percent for the week, marking a second consecutive weekly fall and over 3 percent for the month so far. The dollar index was down 0.14 percent. The Thomson Reuters CoreCommodity CRB Index, which tracks 19 commodities, was up 0.09 percent. Total futures market volume fell by 5,151 to 16,926 lots. Data showed total open interest fell 1,217 to 237,486 contracts in the previous session.