Cotton futures near flat amid stronger dollar

Cotton futures near flat amid stronger dollar

Cotton futures settled near unchanged on Friday as traders held off on their bets ahead of the weekend amid a stronger dollar. The second month December cotton contract on ICE Futures US registered a decline of about 3.7 percent for the week. “It’s the weekend; nobody wants to put on new positions and the dollar has sort of overshadowed everything,” said Keith Brown, principal at cotton brokers Keith Brown and Co in Moultrie, Georgia.

The December cotton contract on ICE Futures US settled down 0.01 cent, or 0.01 percent, at 68.03 cents per lb. It traded within a range of 67.55 and 68.77 cents a lb. Total futures market volume fell by 3,045 to 15,620 lots. Data showed total open interest fell 1,733 to 226,180 contracts in the previous session. Certificated cotton stocks deliverable as of August 24 totalled 51,263 480-lb bales, unchanged from 51,263 in the previous session. The dollar index was up 0.85 percent. The Thomson Reuters CoreCommodity CRB Index, which tracks 19 commodities, was down 0.07 percent.