* Rally ends 9-day losing streak, rises almost 4 pct
* Synthetic prices pointing higher
* Bulls points to tighter supplies

NEW YORK, June 3 (Reuters) - ICE cotton staged its biggest
one-day gain in over seven months and settled limit up on Monday
as speculative investors piled back in to buy after prices sank
to four-month lows at the end of last week.
Bringing an end to a nine-day losing streak, prices jumped
2.5 cents per lb in the final 90 minutes of trading as
speculators piled back in betting on tighter U.S. supplies with
just two months until the end of the 2012/13 season.
Traders saw no obvious trigger for the sudden surge late in
the morning, but Ron Lawson, a partner at commodity investment
firm LOGIC Advisors, said the market had finally woken up to the
bullish factors that he expects to support prices.
"You had nine days down and it ran out of selling. The U.S.
is sold out. Australia is sold out. China's been buying. The
only cotton left is certified stock," he said.
The most-active July cotton contract on ICE Futures U.S.
rose 3 cents, or 3.8 percent, to settle at 82.36 cents
per lb, its daily limit price. That was its best one-day
performance since October.
Synthetic prices of 82.66 cents per lb released by the
exchange indicated prices would likely rally further on Tuesday.
Traders report that physical supplies for the current season
which ends on July 30 are depleting due to healthy demand from
China, which has forced mills and merchants to buy fiber on the
exchange, the world's No. 1 textile market.
Lawson says U.S. availability may tighten further after the
2012/13 ends and before the next harvest in December.
Even so, the bears point to sluggish overall demand and a
massive global surplus - Beijing is holding more than half the
world's cotton off the market in its reserve. Certified stocks
stand at over 517,000 bales.
The rally got June off to a buoyant start, even as indices
sold the front month and bought December in their roll, and
followed two months of losses.
Traders expect higher volumes ahead of July options expiry
on June 14.
Fiber outperformed a buoyant broader commodities market.
The Thomson Reuters-Jefferies CRB index, a
benchmark for global commodities, was up over 1 percent on
Monday even as weaker U.S. and Chinese manufacturing data
reinforced concerns about weakening economic growth in the
world's two biggest economies.