The revised data had sent the market to six-week highs. "There's belief now that fundamentals will improve further, maybe even if just slightly, and that demand will pick up," said Sharon Johnson, a senior cotton specialist at Knight Futures in Atlanta, Georgia. The most-active March cotton contract on ICE Futures US settled up 0.76 cent, or 1 percent, at 75.85 cents per lb after soaring to 76.25, its highest level since October 23. Monday's gain also marked the second session in a row that the market had closed higher.
Traders put technical resistance for March at 78.80, below an October 18 high of 79.19. Volume for the session was also strong. Preliminary Thomson Reuters data showed futures transactions in ICE cotton at nearly 50 percent above the 30-day average. Despite the price gain, US cotton data released on Thursday showed a drop in weekly export sales to a six-week low, raising fears among some investors that recent stronger demand from abroad, particularly from top producer and consumer China, has ebbed.
In its December 11 report, the US Department of Agriculture cut its ending stocks estimate by 600,000 480-pound bales to 79.64 million bales from November's forecast of 80.27 million. Even after the revision, the report would represent the largest supply since USDA records began in 1966 and would be 15 percent higher than last season.