Nov 27 (Reuters) - ICE cotton settled lower on Monday on
commercial hedge pressure, after hitting the highest level in
about two and a half months earlier in the session.

Cotton contracts for March settled down 0.51 cent, or
0.71 percent, at 71.42 cents per lb. It traded within a range of
71.19 and 72.39 cents a lb, its highest since Sept. 11.

"Merchants are buying physical cotton off the March contract
... when they buy (physical) cotton, they have to hedge it on
the board and sell it until they can move it all out," said
Keith Brown, principal at cotton brokers Keith Brown and Co in
Moultrie, Georgia.

Physical demand for the natural fiber is rising because the
global economy is getting stronger and new home sales are rising
in the United States. This could lead to increased demand for
textile products, according to Brown.

The U.S. Department of Agriculture's (USDA) weekly crop
progress report showed 79 percent of the cotton crop was
harvested in the United States by the week ended Nov. 26, up
from 74 percent in the previous week.

The USDA also noted that crop progress data for the week
ended Nov. 26 would be the final report for the 2017 season and
the next report will be released in April 2018.

Meanwhile, speculators raised net long positions by 6,676
contracts to 50,961 in the week to Nov. 21, Commodity Futures
Trading Commission data showed.

Total futures market volume rose by 7,931 to 31,996 lots.
Data showed total open interest gained 2,473 to 233,331
contracts in the previous session.

Certificated cotton stocks <CERT-COT-STX> deliverable as of
Nov. 24 totaled 47,951 480-lb bales, unchanged from 47,951 in
the previous session.

The dollar index was up 0.15 percent. The Thomson
Reuters CoreCommodity CRB Index, which tracks 19
commodities, was down 0.31 percent.
(Reporting by Nithin Prasad in Bengaluru; Editing by Susan
Thomas)