ICE cotton futures fell slightly on Monday on favourable growing conditions for the natural fibre and expectations of more export cancellations. Favourable weather in top growing regions and export cancellations from India and China have put pressure on prices since last week. "We are in the planting season and the crop is going in nicely," said Keith Brown, principal at cotton broker Keith Brown and Co in Moultrie, Georgia.

"Export number coming out this week might reflect some cancellations," Brown said.

"We haven't seen cancellations of any size in a great while. On the reverse, if we do not see cancellations then we can expect July cotton to go back above 80 cents."

Cotton contracts for December settled down 0.44 cent, or 0.60 percent, at 73.01 cents per lb. It traded within a range of 72.82 and 73.7 cents a lb. The July cotton contract on ICE futures US settled down over 1 percent at 78.39 cents per lb. The dollar index was down 0.14 percent. The Thomson Reuters CoreCommodity CRB Index, which tracks 19 commodities, was up 0.54 percent.

Certificated cotton stocks deliverable as of May 19 totaled 405,991 480-lb bales, up from 402,998 in the previous session. Total futures market volume fell by 8,949 to 22,363 lots. Data showed total open interest fell 4,945 to 253,343 contracts in the previous session. Speculators raised their net long position in cotton in the week to May 16 by 9,464 contracts, to 105,674, US Commodity Futures Trading Commission data showed on Friday.

Copyright Reuters, 2017