July 30 (Reuters) -ICE cotton futures rose on Tuesday, driven by buying from mills, while upbeat sentiment in equities further boosted the natural fiber.

* Cotton contracts for December CTZ4 rose 0.49 cent, or 0.71%, to 69.7 cents per lb at 11:33 a.m. EDT (1533 GMT).

* "There has been some pretty good mill buying in the last three or four days and it's moved cotton up near 70 cents, which is what I call near term resistance," said Rogers Varner, president of Varner Brokerage in Cleveland.

* In a weekly crop progress report on Monday, the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) said 49% of the cotton crop was in good-to-excellent condition, compared with 53% a week ago.

* "There's a little resistance at 70 cents, but I think the bigger resistance would be around 71.50 cents in near term," said Varner.

* He added that the forecast for West Texas is dry for next ten days and if this persists by next weekend that will be the catalyst for a little more rally.

* Cotton speculators increased their net short position by 6,751 contracts to 51,241 in the week to July 23.

* Supporting the natural fiber, the blue-chip Dow and the benchmark S&P 500 inched up on Tuesday, shored up by financial stocks in anticipation of a key policy verdict from the Federal Reserve this week, while investors also awaited Big Tech results. .N

* Elsewhere, Chicago corn, wheat and soybean futures fell on Tuesday to trade near their lowest since 2020 as U.S. crop data and weather charts reinforced expectations of big harvests while worries about Chinese demand also hung over commodity markets. GRA/

Reporting by Anmol Choubey in Bengaluru and Maju Samuel