June 21 (Reuters) - ICE Cotton futures fell on Friday as markets looked for further developments on the U.S.-China trade spat, while traders rolled their positions forward into the third month contract ahead of July’s first notice day.
* The most-active cotton contract on ICE Futures U.S., the
third-month December contract , settled down 0.4
cent, or 0.6%, at 65.56 cents per lb.
* It traded within a range of 65.52 and 66.97 cents a lb and fell about 0.3% during the week.
* “There just isnt enough buying to stop this market from sliding, both in the futures as well as in the cash market,” said Peter Egli, director of risk management at British merchant Plexus Cotton in a note.
* ”(However,) maybe a trade deal (between U.S. and China) or some weather issues will eventually trigger a wave of spec buying, but with the trade waiting to sell into such an event, the market has probably not much room to the upside.”
* Thursday’s weekly export sales data from the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) showed a dip in net sales reductions, a marketing-year low, for 2018/2019 from the previous week and prior four-week average.
* The presidents of the United States and China are set to meet next week in Japan and markets are hopeful the world’s two biggest economies could see an end to their long-standing tit-for-tat tariff dispute.
* Market participants were also awaiting the USDA’s acreage report due on June 28.
* The third month cotton contract, meanwhile, fell over 1% in the previous session as investors liquidated their positions ahead of the first notice day for the July contract due next week.
* ”(Cotton) Merchants have been pushing for carrying charges between July and December (cotton contracts) and they have been successful,” said Rogers Varner, president of Varner Brokerage in Cleveland, Mississippi.
* Carrying charges are price differences between futures delivery months.
* Total futures market volume fell by 13,282 to 20,902 lots. Data showed total open interest fell 2,432 to 176,222 contracts in the previous session.
* Certificated cotton stocks <CERT-COT-STX> deliverable as of June 20 totaled 98,414 480-lb bales, up from 97,713 in the previous session.
(Reporting by Asha Sistla in Bengaluru Editing by Marguerita Choy)