Jan 25 (Reuters) - ICE cotton futures rose more than 1 percent on Friday fueled by gains in stock and oil markets as well as a weaker dollar, with short covering by investors lending further support.
* The most active cotton contract on ICE Futures U.S. - the March
contract - settled up 0.99 cent, or 1.35 percent, at
74.13 cents per lb. It traded within a range of 73.25 and 74.24 cents a lb.
* Cotton is being pulled higher by other markets such as stocks, oil and grains, said Jobe Moss, a broker with MCM Inc in Lubbock, Texas, adding that a slide in dollar is also helping.
* "We have seen the market come up on short covering and new speculative buying and ... some index fund rebalancing has given the market a bid as well."
* The dollar index was down 0.8 percent. A weaker greenback makes commodities priced in dollars, such as cotton, less expensive for holders of other currencies.
* U.S. stocks surged on Friday, on upbeat earnings and hopes of a resolution to the lengthy U.S. government shutdown, while oil prices edged higher as political turmoil in Venezuela threatened to tighten crude supply.
* President Donald Trump reached a tentative agreement with U.S. lawmakers for three weeks in stop-gap funding that would end a partial U.S. government shutdown now in its 35th day. The shutdown forced the U.S. Department of Agriculture to delay several major U.S. and world crop reports and export sales data.
* Markets now await China's Vice Premier Liu He's Washington visit on Jan. 30 for signs of progress on the United States-China trade talks.
* Cotton prices struggled in 2018, largely due to the trade tussle between top exporter the United States and China, the biggest consumer of the natural fiber.
* Total futures market volume rose by 6,705 to 25,000 lots. Data showed total open interest fell 938 to 230,713 contracts in the previous session.
* Certificated cotton stocks <CERT-COT-STX> deliverable as of Jan. 24 totaled 120,283 480-lb bales, down from 121,703 in the previous session.
(Reporting by Brijesh Patel in Bengaluru Editing by Chizu Nomiyama)
