NEW YORK, Jan 3: NY cotton futures closed firmer on Wednesday as speculative and fund buying wiped out losses from an early downturn to shove the market into positive territory after the New Year holiday break.

The cotton market was shut Dec. 31, 2001 to Jan. 1, 2002 for the New Year festivities here.

It was a very good day (for the market), said Keith Brown, president of commodity trading firm Keith Brown and Co. in Moultrie, Georgia.

He said an initial wave of trade and speculative selling was erased when speculative and fund accounts ran the market in the other direction.

Key March cotton rose 0.87 cent to finish at 36.46 cents a lb, near the top of its 35-36.60 cents trading band. May went up 0.67 cent to close at 37.88 cents. Back months increased between 0.20-0.87 cent.

Floor sources said most of the early pressure stemmed from follow-through speculative fund sales caused by the weakness seen last Friday, the last trading session of the preceding year.

The market moved to the highs on light fund buying, said Mike Stevens of Swiss Financial Services in Mandeville, Louisiana, adding late support was seen on additional July put selling.

Floor brokers said local covering combined with put selling and call buying to give the market a boost.

Analysts said the market’s attention will likely turn to next week’s monthly USDA supply/demand report, which should help give players an idea whether Washington will bump up its estimate of Chinese cotton production following.

In its monthly production data last December, USDA pegged Chinese cotton output for 2001/02 at 23.50 million (480-lb) bales, unchanged from the preceding month’s report.

Technically, brokers said they believe support in the March cotton contract would be at 35 cents while resistance would be at 36.50 and 37 cents.

Estimated final volume reached 5,000 lots from the previous 5,648 lots.—Reuters