Nov 14 (Reuters) - ICE cotton futures dipped on Tuesday
weighed down by growing harvest pressure, with federal data
showing steady progress in the U.S. cotton harvest.
Cotton contracts for March settled down 0.28 cent, or
0.41 percent, at 68.65 cents per lb. It traded within a range of
68.62 and 69.36 cents a lb.
"In U.S. the harvest is moving along very nicely and we've
got very good harvest weather," said Louis Rose, co-founder and
director of research and analytics at Rose Commodity.
On Monday, the U.S. Department of Agriculture's (USDA)
weekly crop progress report showed 64 percent of cotton crop was
harvested in the United States by the week ended Nov. 12, up
from 54 percent in the previous week.
"Mid-south is about finished, Texas is little ahead of the
average ... we've got a lot of cotton coming into the pipeline
and it has to be hedged," Rose added.
The USDA in its monthly crop supply and demand report,
raised U.S. production estimates to 21.38 million bales from
21.12 million bales in the previous month.
Meanwhile, speculators cut their net long position by 5,695
contracts to 44,347 in week to Nov. 7, Commodity Futures Trading
Commission data showed.
Total futures market volume fell by 9,246 to 42,275 lots.
Data showed total open interest gained 25 to 228,827 contracts
in the previous session.
Certificated cotton stocks <CERT-COT-STX> deliverable as of
Nov. 13 totaled 48,128 480-lb bales, up from 46,922 in the
previous session.
The dollar index was down 0.68 percent. The Thomson
Reuters CoreCommodity CRB Index , which tracks 19
commodities, was down 1.25 percent.

(Reporting by Eileen Soreng in Bengaluru; Editing by Chizu
Nomiyama)