Mills priced or rolled 1,692 on-call lots in December in the latest reporting week. Texas harvest reached 30% complete and cotton rated fair and better rose to 86%.

Cotton futures settled on modest gains Tuesday, with spot December bouncing off a narrow penetration of the prior-session low to regain some of Monday’s sharp loss.

December gained 24 points to close at 67.77 cents, in the lower third of its 115-point range from down eight points to a 10-session low at 67.45 to up 107 points at 68.60 cents. It has made lower highs five sessions in a row and lower lows four of the last five.

March edged up 16 points to settle at 67.48 cents, trading within a 111-point range from 67.20 to 68.40 cents. The other contracts finished up 13 to 25 points.

Volume was estimated at 23,026 lots, compared with 23,994 lots the previous session when spreads accounted for 10,729 lots or 45%, EFP 237 lots and EFS 102 lots. Options volume slipped to 3,814 lots (1,691 calls and 2,123 puts) from 5,425 lots (2,887 calls and 2,536 puts).

Scale-down mill fixations and increased export inquiries were seen as helping to hold December just above a key support point on back-to-back tests of the 67.40 low of Oct. 3.

Mills priced or rolled 1,692 on-call lots in December during the latest reporting week ended Oct. 6, cutting their unpriced position there to 27,224 lots (2.722 million bales), according to weekly Commodity Futures Trading Commission data.

Producers reduced their unpriced December call position by 309 lots to 16,350, resulting in the net difference declining 1,383 lots to 10,874, which was 8.5% of the declining open interest. The unpriced mill position outweighed that of producers by a ratio of 1.7:1.

Unpriced positions in March rose by 779 lots to 40,317 on the mill side and by 277 lots to 5,527 on the producer side.

The bulk of the speculative community’s net-long position is concentrated in December. First notice day for December is Nov. 24, now 26 trading sessions away.

Across the board, mills priced a net 536 lots to trim their total unpriced position to 135,587 lots (13.559 million bales), snapping a string of five consecutive weeks of record high sales.

Producers added 410 lots to hike their total unpriced position to 37,560 lots. The overall net call difference dipped 946 lots to 98,027, representing a virtually unchanged 42.6% of the falling open interest.

Meanwhile, harvesting of the Texas cotton crop edged up three percentage points during the week ended Sunday to 30% complete, up from 22% a year ago and the five-year average, according to USDA’s latest progress report.

Boll opening at 73% was up from 60% a week earlier but lagged behind 82% last year and 80% on average. Crop conditions showed 86% rated fair and better, up from 83% a week earlier and 81% a year ago.

Futures open interest declined 709 lots to 229,193 on Monday, with December’s down 1,800 lots to 121,508 and March’s up 670 lots to 73,391. Certified stocks declined 879 bales to 5,705.