NEW YORK, May 2 (Reuters) - Benchmark U.S. cotton futures
tumbled on Monday amid professional sales, scuppering a brief
recovery late last week and opening the door to further
declines this week, analysts said.

Dealers said selling by investors and producers was behind
the drop in the benchmark July cotton contract on ICE
Futures U.S., which ended down 3.57 cents, or 2.3 percent, at
$1.5445 per lb. New-crop December cotton fell 3.87
cents, nearly 3 percent to $1.2706 cents per lb.

Volume traded was almost 11,000 lots, over 50 percent below
the norm, Thomson Reuters preliminary data showed.

'You've got technical weakness,' said Mike Stevens, an
independent cotton analyst in Louisiana. 'It's acting poorly.'

The level of investor interest in the cotton market is at
its lowest level since July 2010 before futures embarked
rallied to record highs in early March.

Open interest on Friday fell to a 9-1/2 month low at
153,644 lots.

Once the July contract failed to extend higher following
Friday's strong bounce, the drifting market stumbled into
automatic sell-stop orders, dealers said.

Stevens said another source of pressure on cotton contracts
came from southern hemisphere cotton crops in countries such as
Brazil and Australia that are now being marketed by their
growers.

Analysts were looking for clues on how open interest in the
spot May cotton contract of over 5,000 lots as of Friday
would be disposed of before expiration looming at the end of
this week.

Analysts said the severe drought in the top growing state
of Texas is becoming an increasing source of concern for the
market.

'The weather situation in Texas has not gotten any better
for planting, as they continue to lack the rain needed. There
is still time for the weather to turn around and dump the rain
they need but it is time to start to take notice,' a report by
Louis Barbera of VIP Commodities said.

Volume traded in the cotton market was at 13,852 lots as of
April 29, ICE Futures U.S. data showed.