ICE cotton futures jumped 1.5 percent on Monday, ahead of the US Department of Agriculture's weekly crop progress report, and concerns of crop damage in Texas, the top cotton producing state in the United States. Cotton contracts for December settled up 1 cent at 69.46 cents per lb. The contract posted its biggest one-day percentage rise in three weeks.

"There has been some adverse weather in West Texas, which is threatening that crop," said Keith Brown, principal at cotton brokers Keith Brown and Co in Moultrie, Georgia. "The crop progress report may show a little more deterioration in the US crop, particularly in the south, so that may be another reason the market perked up a little bit."

Speculators cut their net long position in cotton by 6,019 contracts to 62,786 contracts in the week to September 19, after raising their net long position for three consecutive weeks, the US Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CFTC) data showed on Friday. "We are about to go into the harvest so that is usually a negative time, and the dollar is sharply higher... so this could be a momentary rise in cotton prices only to see a comeback down again," Brown said. The dollar index was up 0.52 percent. The Thomson Reuters CoreCommodity CRB Index, which tracks 19 commodities, was up 0.57 percent. Total futures market volume fell by 1,983 to 15,268 lots. Data showed total open interest fell 1,389 to 236,097 contracts in the previous session.

Copyright Reuters, 2017