Aug 9 (Reuters) - ICE cotton futures fell for the first time in four sessions on Friday, after U.S. President Donald Trump said that the United States and China might not make a trade deal for now, ahead of the monthly supply/demand report.
* The most-active cotton contract on ICE Futures U.S., the
second-month December contract , fell 0.38 cent, or
0.64%, at 59.20 cents per lb as of 1:40 p.m. EDT (1740 GMT).
* The second month contract fell for a second straight week, down about 0.5% this week. Earlier in the week, the contract touched its lowest since March 2016 at 57.26 cents a lb.
* Trump on Friday said that he was not ready to make a trade deal with China and had decided that U.S. would not do business with Chinese telecoms giant Huawei Technologies for the time being, prompting U.S. stocks to fall sharply.
* “China appeared as a buyer in the export sales report on Thursday, but that is probably going to be it for sometime because of the trade war and so we are wondering about demand,” said Jack Scoville, vice president at Price Futures Group in Chicago.
* China reported increases of 60,100 running bales in net sales for 2019-20 crop on Thursday.
* The drawn-out trade war between the world’s top consumer of the fiber, China, and one of the biggest producers, the United States have led to a 19% fall in cotton prices so far this year.
* “Supply is very plentiful and demand is very putrid. It’s a total buyer’s market and the buying just ain’t that good,” Ron Lee, general manager at McCleskey Cotton in Bronwood, Georgia said in a note on Wednesday.
* Investors are now eyeing the release of the U.S. Department of Agriculture’s monthly World Agriculture Supply and Demand Estimates (WASDE) report due on Monday.
* “We are probably going to see an increase in the U.S. carryover and reduction in world consumption” in the supply-demand report, said Jim Nunn, owner of Tennessee cotton brokerage Nunn Cotton.
* Total futures market volume fell by 13,086 to 13,343 lots. Data showed total open interest gained 1,337 to 211,839 contracts in the previous session.
(Reporting by Sumita Layek in Bengaluru; editing by Diane Craft)
