June 30 (Reuters) - ICE cotton futures on Friday rose 2 percent to mark its biggest one-day percentage rise in over nine months after a federal report showed U.S. farmers planted slightly less cotton than expected.
The December cotton contract on ICE Futures settled up 1.35 cent, or 2.01 percent, at 68.59 cents per lb. It traded within a range of 66.86 and 68.69 cents a lb. The contract registered its biggest percentage weekly rise since early February, up over 2 percent for the week, despite hitting nearly 10-month lows on Monday.
The U.S. Agriculture Department's Annual Acreage report estimated all cotton planted acres at 12.055 million, which was below analysts' estimate of 12.278 million acres and the USDA March forecast of 12.233 million. The projections, however, are 20 percent above USDA's final 2016 figure of 10.075 million.
"The planted acres coming a little bit less than what was anticipated started the rally and then people turned focus to what field conditions on weather will be next week and people are just buying ahead of the holiday," said Keith Brown, principal at cotton broker Keith Brown and Co in Moultrie, Georgia. "There are a lot of areas in the U.S. where the cotton crop is not off to a great start." Sales of upland cotton for the 2016/2017 crop year totaled 261,300 running bales in the week ended June 22, up 56 percent from the previous week, the weekly export sales data from the U.S. Department of Agriculture showed on Thursday.
"In the light of less acres than anticipated people are also revisiting Thursday's (strong) export sales," Brown said. Meanwhile, cotton exports in India, the world's biggest cotton producer, are likely to fall 17 percent in 2016/17 from a year ago to 6 million bales, the Cotton Association of India said on Thursday.
Speculators again cut a bullish bet in cotton by 14,048 contracts to 31,134, in the week to June 27, U.S. Commodity Futures Trading Commission data showed on Friday. The dealers lowered their net long stance in cotton futures and options for a sixth straight week to lowest in about a year.
Total futures market volume rose by 9,862 to 26,360 lots. Data showed total open interest gained 609 to 201,953 contracts in the previous session.
(Reporting by Swati Verma in Bengaluru; Editing by Richard Chang)
