ICE cotton futures edged up on Monday as concerns of crop damage in top producer Texas persisted, ahead of crop progress data from the US government. "There is a little bit of concern over freezing temperatures in Lubbock, Texas," said Rogers Varner, president of Varner Brokerage in Cleveland, Mississippi, though adding, "Cotton is moving on good demand and is very stable."
"The market is right now grappling on what the final supply of the US crop will be and how much loss, if any, came due to the freeze." Cotton contracts for December settled up 0.44 cent, or 0.65 percent, at 68.64 cents per lb. It traded within a range of 67.95 and 69.2 cents a lb. The contract registered its biggest one-day percentage gain since Oct. 23.
The market awaited crop progress data from the US Department of Agriculture due later in the day. On Friday, speculators raised their net long position by 173 contracts to 48,922 in the week to Oct. 24, Commodity Futures Trading Commission data showed. Total futures market volume rose by 5,282 to 25,975 lots. Data showed total open interest fell 6 to 231,356 contracts in the previous session. Certificated cotton stocks deliverable as of Oct. 27 totalled 2,031 480-lb bales, unchanged from the previous session. The dollar index was down 0.34 percent. The Thomson Reuters CoreCommodity CRB Index, which tracks 19 commodities, was up 0.34 percent.