"There's more producer selling than speculator buying in the market today," said Keith Brown, principal at cotton brokers Keith Brown and Co in Moultrie, Georgia. Potentially catastrophic Hurricane Irma clobbered Caribbean islands with pounding winds, rain and surging surf on Wednesday as officials in Florida called for evacuations ahead of the storm's expected landfall there this weekend. Irma could become the second powerful storm to thrash the US mainland in as many weeks, but its precise trajectory remained uncertain.
The contract has risen about 12 percent since it touched a low of 67.51 cents per lb on Aug. 25 on worries over damages to the natural fibre from tropical storm Harvey in Texas, the major cotton growing region in the United States. Concerns over further potential damage to the crops from hurricane Irma has also driven prices up.
Total futures market volume fell by 22,156 to 44,680 lots. Data showed total open interest gained 4,967 to 234,800 contracts in the previous session. Certificated cotton stocks deliverable as of Sept. 5 totalled 8,730 480-lb bales, down from 8,777 in the previous session.
Copyright Reuters, 2017