Nov 16 (Reuters) - ICE cotton futures rose on Thursday to
mark its biggest one-day percentage gain in a week, on robust
export sales data from the U.S. Department of Agriculture
(USDA).
Cotton contracts for March settled up 0.34 cent, or
0.49 percent -- its highest since Nov. 10 -- at 69.18 cents per
lb. It traded within a range of 68.79 and 69.49 cents a lb.
"We saw a much better than expected export report of over
500,000 bales with lot of it going to Pakistan, some U.S. bales
probably replacing some Indian bales," said Ron Lee, general
manager at McCleskey Cotton in Bronwood, Georgia, adding "demand
seems to be good in the export market."
Earlier in the day the USDA reported net upland sales of
506,700 running bales for 2017/2018, a marketing-year high, in
its weekly export sales report.
"The prices have been in a two cent range for over a month
... it seems to me everybody is already in a holiday mood and
prices will probably remain sideways for a while," Lee said.
Total futures market volume rose by 2,653 to 36,105 lots.
Data showed total open interest fell 1,886 to 224,750 contracts
in the previous session.
Certificated cotton stocks <CERT-COT-STX> deliverable as of
Nov. 15 totaled 47,970 480-lb bales, down from 48,128 in the
previous session.
The dollar index was up 0.13 percent. The Thomson
Reuters CoreCommodity CRB Index , which tracks 19
commodities, was down 0.21 percent.
(Reporting by Eileen Soreng in Bengaluru
Editing by Sandra Maler)