March 30, 2008	Sunday	Rabi-ul-Awwal 21, 1429

NEW YORK, March 29: Cotton futures reeled from liquidation by investors at the end of the month to finish lower on Friday while players braced for release of a vital government plantings report next week, brokers said.

The ICE Futures’ May cotton contract dropped 1.22 cents to close at 71.68 cents per lb, dealing from 71.28 to 73.35 cents. The new-crop December cotton futures fell 1.32 cents to close at 81.67 cents.

Mike Stevens, an analyst for brokers SFS Futures in Mandeville, Louisiana, said fiber contracts drifted down on a flurry of profit-taking after the market’s recent advance.

Otherwise, cotton futures were straddling the fence, waiting on that report, said Stevens, alluding to the annual potential plantings report by the U.S. Agriculture Department which is due out on Monday.

The range of guesses in the cotton industry on US 2008 cotton plantings ranged from 8.8 million to 9.5 million acres, a level that would still be a 25-year low.

Most are clustered around 9.1 million to 9.3 million acres as American farmers move out of cotton to plant pricier soybeans following a robust rally in the Chicago Board of Trade.

Cotton industry analysts said most of the farmers getting out of cotton are located in the South eastern United States which includes states like Georgia.

There is also a large-scale move to soybeans in the Mississippi delta states of Louisiana which face the Gulf of Mexico, the analysts said.

We’ll take a look Monday morning at what the USDA report shows and then we start focusing on crop conditions as we go from spring into summer, one explained.

Broker Flanagan Trading Corp sees support in the May cotton contract at 71 and 70.20 cents, with resistance at 71.95 and 72.90 cents.

Volume traded in the cotton market on Thursday was at 15,799 lots, with open interest in the market slipping 525 lots to 271,628 contracts as of March 27, exchange data showed

.—Reuters