NEW YORK, Oct 12: NY cotton futures closed mixed on Thursday in mostly spread activity as players completed adjusting their positions in front of a pair of USDA reports on Friday.

It’s just a little bit of pre-report positioning, John Flanagan, president of brokers Flanagan Trading Corp. in North Carolina, said.

December cotton slipped 0.15 cent to close at 32.17 cents a lb, trading between 32.10 and 32.80 cents.

March shed 0.16 cent to finish at 33.72 cents.

Distant months were 0.05 cent softer to 0.10 cent firmer.

Brokers said the bulk of activity was largely made up of spreads, with only small amounts of speculative interest and trade pressure seen in the market.

The vast majority of activity has been spreads, said Joe Carney, analyst for brokers STA Trading Services in Memphis, Tennessee.

Locals ran out the door going into the close after failing to carve out any headway north, dealers said.

Analysts said some market operators were looking to the release of the monthly USDA production report and the weekly USDA export sales data, all of which are being released at 0830 EDT on Friday.

Most dealers have said they would be keen about seeing what kind of world cotton consumption figures the USDA would report in the aftermath of attacks in New York and outside Washington last month which may have tipped the global economy into recession.

In its September production data, USDA trimmed its forecast of world cotton consumption to 92.55 million (480-lb) bales from the previous month’s 92.60 while raising world ending stocks to 42.73 million against 41.53 million bales.

As to the USDA sales data, dealers are expecting the same robust degree of sales and shipments seen last week. Last week, the USDA said new upland cotton sales hit 154,400 bales while shipments touched 136,500 bales.

Technicians said key support for the December cotton contract would be the psychological target of 30 cents, then

29.50 and even 27.80 cents. Resistance in the contract was seen at 33 and then in layers to 35 cents.

Dealers estimated final volume traded at some 8,000 lots, compared with the previous tally of 5,267 lots.—Reuters