Cotton futures fall

Cotton futures fell on Tuesday weighed down by a stronger US dollar, as the natural fibre market awaited the World Agricultural Supply and Demand Estimates (WASDE) report from the US government on Wednesday. The dollar hit an 11-week high on Tuesday as investors increased bets that the Federal Reserve would raise interest rates in December following a round of generally solid US economic data over the last few weeks.

"The movement in the dollar will mean more to cotton than whatever comes out in the (WASDE) report," said Rogers Varner, president of Varner Brokerage in Cleveland, Mississippi, adding that the greenback was the "big force" in the market on Tuesday. The WASDE report was likely to show an about 1 million bale increase in production, Varner said.

"The only question we have is if world consumption will rise by the same." The December cotton contract on ICE Futures US settled down 0.22 cent, or 0.33 percent, at 67.14 cents per lb. It traded within a range of 67.02 and 68.04 cents a lb. The dollar index was up 0.77 percent. The Thomson Reuters CoreCommodity CRB Index, which tracks 19 commodities, was down 0.63 percent. Total futures market volume fell by 2,535 to 17,050 lots. Data showed total open interest fell 3,025 to 243,791 contracts in the previous session.