Cotton futures dawdled on light volume within tight ranges and finished a lackluster session slightly ahead Friday, with July confined within the prior-day price span.

July edged up 34 points to settle at 84.51 cents, in the upper half of its 82-point range from up 61 points at 84.78 cents to down 21 points at 83.96 cents. Maturing May didn’t trade.

December closed up 31 points to 79.27 cents, near the high of its 41-point range 4-point range between 78.95 cents and 79.36 cents. For the week, July dipped 22 points and December 16 points. These were the first weekly losses in four for July and in five for December.

Volume slowed to an estimated 14,800 lots from 25,067 lots the previous session. Options volume fell to 5,878 lots (3,468 calls and 2,410 puts) from 12,348 lots (9,891 calls and 2,457 puts).

Unpriced mill on-call sales based in July rose by 4,449 lots to 55,598 (55.56 million bales) last week, according to data reported by the Commodity Futures Trading Commission after the close Thursday.

Producers increased their unfixed position by 664 lots to 6,119 (611,900 bales), widening the net call difference 3,785 lots to 49,479. The difference amounted to 36.9% of July’s rising open interest, up from 35.9% a week earlier.

The ratio of potential buying to potential selling narrowed to 9.09:1 from 9.37:1. A year ago, unfixed positions were 45,733 lots for mills and 4,169 for producers, a ratio of 10.97:1, and the net call difference was 31.49% of the open interest. How many unfixed positions may be hedged in options isn’t known.

Mills priced or rolled 9,878 lots in May and producers did that on 1,373 lots, reducing their respective unfixed positions in that contract to 2,897 lots and 583 lots. This was one trading session before first notice day.

On the crop scene, U.S. 2017-crop upland cotton under loan declined 200,057 running bales to 2.258 million RB during the week ended Monday, according to the latest USDA figures.

Repayments were made on 233,876 RB and entries were 33,819 RB. Loans outstanding included 149,691 RB of Form A issued to individual growers and 2.109 million of Form G issued to loan servicing agents or marketing cooperatives. The largest block of outstanding loans was 560,229 RB in Texas, all in Form G.

Certified stocks grew 2,875 bales to 71,561. There were 3,491 bales added at Memphis and 616 bales decertified at Galveston. Futures open interest increased 2,249 lots to 71,561 on Thursday, with May’s down 29 lots to 152, July’s up 1,523 lots to 135,328 and December’s up 706 lots to 105,097.