ICE Cotton Futures Ends Limit-up

US cotton futures closed up the daily trading limit on Tuesday on speculative buying ahead of a US government report that is expected to show reduced supplies in China and a smaller crop in flood-ravaged Australia, analysts said. The benchmark March cotton contract on ICE Futures US increased the daily 4.00-cent limit to settle at $1.4725 per lb, with the session low at $1.4315.

Volume traded was 17,200 lots, over 50 percent below the 30-day norm, Thomson Reuters preliminary data showed. "The market's looking for cuts tomorrow," said Mike Stevens, an independent cotton analyst in Mandeville, Louisiana. The US Agriculture Department's monthly supply/demand report is scheduled for release at 8:30 am EST (1330 GMT) on Wednesday.

In its December report, USDA pegged China's cotton ending stocks at 13.22 million (480-lb) bales, unchanged from the preceding month's estimate. USDA estimated Australia's cotton harvest at 4.0 million bales, from 3.5 million in the preceding month's estimate. Stevens said many in the trade are anticipating a reduction in cotton ending stocks for top consumer China and a cut in output from Australia, where historic flooding caused by the La Nina weather anomaly has devastated the country.

He said the market is now monitoring for demand destruction amid the strong cotton futures prices heading into the spring of 2011. Another factor for the market is the rebalancing by index funds aiming to cut risk from cotton and other overly weighted agriculture markets and adding exposure to natural gas and crude oil. The rebalancing runs between this week and next. Cotton was the best performing commodity in 2010 in the Reuters Jefferies Commodity Index, climbing 91.5 percent.

ICE Mar11 Cotton Trend: