The most-active March cotton contract on ICE Futures US settled down 0.06 cent, or 0.07 percent, at 75.83 cents per lb, having recovered some lost ground shortly before the close. Prices languished in negative territory all day, but moved off an intraday low of 75.05 cents after finding support at its 10-day moving average.
---- Fibres down but one of best performers among commodities
"The firm support below 75.25 cents and the push higher at settlement demonstrate continued speculative interest in buying cotton, especially on the pullbacks," the broker's analysts said. The Thomson Reuters-Jefferies CRB index, which tracks 19 futures markets, was down 0.38 percent, as concerns about a deadlock in talks to avert a fiscal crisis and weak US job data offset an upward revision of the country's economic growth.
The cotton market barely reacted to the weekly export sales, with macroeconomic news overshadowing the market, INTL FCStone said. USDA said 333,900 running bales were sold in the week to Thursday, with China, the world's biggest textile market, accounting for half of the total. That was up from the 283,900 bales registered in the prior week, the lowest since November 2 data.