ICE cotton futures inched up on Friday in thin volume trade, on lower tenderable stocks and on dry weather concerns in Texas – the major cotton-producing area in the United States.
* The most active ICE cotton contract for July expiry CTN8 settled up 0.34 cent, or 0.40 percent, at 84.51 cents per lb.
* It traded within a range of 83.96 cents a lb. and 84.78 cents a lb.
* The contract was down for the first time in four weeks.
* The weekly U.S. Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CFTC) Cotton On-Call report, which shows the quantity of call cotton bought or sold on unfixed price, was released on Thursday.
* “The On-Call report being 42 percent of the open interest in July and there doesn’t seem to be that much more tenderable cotton left here in the U.S.,” said Louis Barbera, partner and analyst at VLM Commodities LTD.
* “The qualities that are left are of the low mike variety that are not tenderable.”
* Traders are also watching rain forecasts in Texas.
* “There’s a tremendous problem in West Texas. … Dryness that has been prevalent for the last six months is going to present a problem not only for timeliness of the crop but also yields of the crop,” Barbera added.
* Speculators raised their net long position in cotton by 4,603 contracts to 84,116 contracts in the week to April 24, U.S. CFTC data showed on Friday. CFTC/
* Total futures market volume fell by 9,493 to 13,959 lots. Data showed total open interest gained 2,249 to 265,991 contracts in the previous session.
* Certificated cotton stocks CERT-COT-STX deliverable as of April 26 totaled 71,561 480-lb bales, up from 68,686 in the previous session. Cotton Outlook (Cotlook) in its April forecast reduced its projections for both global consumption and production of cotton in the 2018-19 crop year

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