After hitting an over two-week high earlier in the session ICE cotton fell on Friday and has snapped six straight sessions of gains as concerns of crop damage due to Hurricane Harvey faded in top US producing regions. As Rogers Varner, President, Varner Brokerage in Cleveland, Mississippi says the track of Harvey was changed from going into the Delta to more or less southern and south western Texas and dissipating.
Cotton contracts for December settled down 1.68 cent, or 2.41 percent, at 68.15 cents per lb, snapping six straight sessions of gains. It traded within a range of 67.51 and 70 cents a lb. Still, at this time losses would appear to be minimal - at least in terms of overall US production, points out Louis Rose, Co-founder and Director of research and analytics at Rose Commodity.
Varner says the market is going lower over time. On ICE Futures US, speculators cut net long position in cotton by 6,516 contracts to 21,172 in week to August 22. Total futures market data showed total open interest fell 973 to 226,412 contracts in the previous session its volume rose by 11,341 to 28,120 lots. Certificated cotton stocks deliverable as of August 24 totaled 10,888 480-lb bales, down from 11,279 in the previous session.
