ICE cotton climbs to over a week high on Texas weather worries

    July 9 (Reuters) - ICE cotton futures rose on Monday to
touch an over one-week high supported by dry weather concerns in
Texas, the top cotton producing state in the United States. 
    * The most active cotton contract on ICE Futures U.S., the
third-month December contract              , settled up 1.02
cent, or 1.21 percent, at 85.47 cents per lb. 
    * It traded within a range of 84.14 and 85.72 cents a lb,
touching
a peak since June 29. 
    * "I think we are focused back on the weather as well as the
crop
reports (USDA's WASDE) this Thursday," said Jack Scoville, vice
president with Price Futures Group in Chicago.
    * "The weather remains mostly hot and dry in the Texas
Panhandle
and surrounding areas, and this is a big production area...
Yield losses are very possible and the market is starting to
move higher in response," Scoville added.
    * The U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) is scheduled to
release the monthly World Agricultural Supply and Demand
Estimates (WASDE) on July 12.
    * "WASDE report will provide some insight as to how much the
USDA
believes continued droughty conditions across west Texas, India,
Pakistan and other areas has reduced this season's production
potential – and how much a smaller crop might trim overall
demand for raw cotton, if any," Louis Rose, director of research
and analytics at Tennessee-based Rose Commodity Group, said in a
note.
    * Meanwhile, speculators cut their net long position in
cotton by
3,408 contracts to 83,661 in the week to July 3, U.S. Commodity
Futures Trading Commission data showed on Monday.        
    * Total futures market volume fell by 1,240 to 20,723 lots.
Data
showed total open interest fell 1,103 to 252,680 contracts in
the previous session.
    * Certificated cotton stocks CERT-COT-STX deliverable as
of July
6 totaled 33,224 480-lb bales, up from 31,351 in the previous
session.


 (Reporting by Eileen Soreng in Bengaluru; Editing by Lisa
Shumaker)