NEW YORK: ICE cotton futures edged lower on Wednesday on technical selling and harvest pressure, while market participants were kept waiting for the outcome of the US presidential election.

The cotton contract for December had fallen 0.25 cent, or 0.4%, to 69.99 cents per lb by 1:03 p.m. EST (1803 GMT), having earlier risen to a one-week high of 70.72 cents.

The US presidential election hung in the balance after the race was closer than expected, with Democrat Joe Biden leading in two critical Midwestern states that could tip the contest in his favour.

“The speculators are still long and the market remains quite overbought so on rallies you have speculators coming out of their positions. May be they are coming out due to the uncertainty regarding the election as well,” said Keith Brown, principal at cotton brokers Keith Brown and Co in Georgia.

“We are (also) in the harvest period for the northern hemisphere and it is going to be hard to rally the market big time.”

On Tuesday, the December contract rose 2.2%, its biggest one-day percentage rise since Sept. 14, as the dollar eased on bets that Biden would win the election.

“Cotton has traded both positively and negatively but for the most part it is just waiting on the (election) outcome,” said Bailey Thomen, cotton risk management associate with StoneX Group.

“The market s going to be friendly if President Trump wins again. His policies seem to be more supportive to businesses and we’ll see more trade continue,” Thomen said.

Total futures market volume fell by 17,445 to 19,332 lots.

Certificated cotton stocks deliverable as of Nov. 2 totaled 54,155 480-lb bales, up from 51,079 in the previous session.—Reuters