January 20, 2002	Sunday	Ziqa’ad 5, 1422

NEW YORK, Jan 19: NY cotton futures settled weaker on Friday as speculative sales into light stops pushed them into negative territory ahead of the holiday weekend.

We hit some spec stops, that’s all. It’s very quiet though, said Carole Carter of the Jernigan Group-FIMAT in Nashville, Tennessee.

The market remained confined within its 35-39 cents trading range going into a holiday break. The market will be shut Monday for the Martin Luther King Jr. holiday. Business resumes Tuesday.

March cotton came off 0.63 cent to finish at 37.33 cents a lb, moving 37.15-38.35 cents. May slumped 0.59 cent to end at 38.81 cents and back months fell 0.48-0.68 cent.

Floor sources said early local interest pushed the market to its highs for the day, but the trade sold it and then speculative accounts hunting for stops pressed it south.

When the specs saw they could not get anything going at the top of the range, they decided to run stops going down, one broker said.

Cotton marketing analyst O.A. Cleveland said in his weekly newsletter that March should gradually climb on the back of stronger foreign cotton quotes.

But New York cotton futures are “burdened” by large US cotton ending stocks which may rise in the absence of a new Farm Bill that will be debated by Congress when it resumes sessions on Jan 23, according to Cleveland.

US domestic mill consumption also continues to soften, which is another burden facing the cotton market.

The National Cotton Council had calculated annualized mill consumption at 7.32 million (480-lb) bales, according to monthly data provided by the US Census Bureau last month.

In its monthly January production data, USDA forecast US domestic consumption cotton consumption for 2001/02 at 7.7 million bales. A few years ago, consumption stood at 11 million bales.

Technically, analysts predict resistance in March cotton at the session peak of 38.35 and 38.50 cents. The recent high of 38.75 cents is a key resistance level. The analysts said support should be seen at 37 cents.

Volume traded hit some 6,500 lots against the previous count of 7,196 lots. Open interest in the market was at 63,782 lots as of Jan 17, up 191 lots from the previous session.—Reuters