May 18 (Reuters) - ICE cotton futures fell on Thursday as a weekly government report showed a drop in export sales, with a recovering U.S. dollar and favorable weather in top growing regions also weighing on prices of the natural fiber crop.
"The immediate nature of the market is that it seems to be following grain markets, currencies and also the good weather (in U.S growing regions)," said Rogers Varner, president of Varner Brokerage in Cleveland, Mississippi.
"Sales were good but there were 12 countries that had small cancellations and the most important of those was India," he said.
Weekly export sales data from the U.S. Department of Agriculture on Thursday showed net upland sales for the 2016-17 crop last week totaled 120,700 running bales (RB), down 25 percent from the week before. Reductions of 23,300 RB and 12,800 RB were reported for India and Japan, respectively.
"The dollar has stopped going down and that seems to have caused some of these commodities to reverse and go down," Varner said.
The U.S. dollar reversed early losses against a basket of major currencies on Thursday after stronger-than-expected U.S. economic data put the focus back on a widely anticipated increase in overnight interest rates by the Federal Reserve.
The July cotton contract on ICE Futures U.S. settled down 0.93 cent, or 1.16 percent, at 79.24 cents per lb. It traded within a range of 78.84 and 80.63 cents a lb.
The dollar index was up 0.39 percent. The Thomson Reuters CoreCommodity CRB Index , which tracks 19 commodities, was down 0.40 percent.
Certificated cotton stocks deliverable as of 17MAY17 totaled 387,267 480-lb bales, up from 384,842 in the previous session.
Chicago Board of Trade July soybean futures were down 27-3/4 cents at $9.48 per bushel after dipping to $9.46, the contract's lowest since April 11 CBOT July corn was down 5-3/4 cents at $3.65-3/4 a bushel, and July wheat fell 1-1/2 cents at $4.25-1/2 a bushel.
Source: Timesofindia.indiatimes.com
