Cotton Lower Ahead of Crop Progress Report
October 24 2016 - 11:29AM
Dow Jones News
By Julie Wernau
Cotton prices started the week in a slump Monday ahead of a
weekly crop progress report.
Cotton for December delivery fell 0.6% to 68.68 cents a pound on
the ICE Futures U.S. exchange, on track for its fifth straight
session of losses.
"This week's crop progress report is likely to show strong
harvest progress," said Louis Rose, founder of
commodities-consulting firm Risk Analytics.
For the week ended Oct. 21, the USDA had classed 803,443 bales
of cotton from this year's harvest thus far, with classing to date
at 2,683,655 bales, or about 17% of government projections for the
season.
Following heavy rains in east-central and southeastern cotton
areas of the U.S. due to hurricanes and storms, cotton growing
regions have dried in recent weeks, according to forecasting firm
WeatherBELL Analytics in New York.
The firm said the weather is expected to be drier in most cotton
areas over the next 10 days, which should aid harvests.
The USDA reports on the progress of U.S. crops at 4 p.m. EDT
Monday.
Traders also said they are anticipating a less robust report of
sales of U.S. fiber overseas in Thursday's export sales report.
Despite strong sales in last week's report, futures received only a
limited boost.
In other markets, raw sugar for March was up 1.7% to 23.10 cents
a pound, cocoa for December fell 1.4% to $2,687 a ton, arabica
coffee for December rose 1.1% to $1.578 a pound and frozen
concentrated orange juice futures for November were up 1.1% at
$2.0275 a pound.
Write to Julie Wernau at julie.wernau@wsj.com
(END) Dow Jones Newswires
October 24, 2016 11:14 ET (15:14 GMT)
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