NEW YORK: Benchmark cotton futures on ICE gained the most since late June on Tuesday, as low prices and key chart levels stoked buying.

“We saw quiet a bit of buying around 65 cents (per lb),” said Louis Rose, an independent cotton trader and consultant at Risk Analytics in Memphis, Tennessee.

Hot, dry weather across the Southeastern United States could hurt crops in a key growing region of the world’s top exporter and falling exchange inventories also supported, he said.

The December cotton contracts on ICE Futures US settled up 0.61 cent, or 0.9 percent, at 66.13 cents per pound.

Certificated cotton stocks deliverable as of July 13 totaled 144,121 480-lb bales, down from 148,522 in the previous session. They have been declining since late June.

The dollar index was down 0.21 percent. The Thomson Reuters Core Commodity CRB Index, which tracks 19 commodities, was up 0.35 percent.—Reuters