NEW YORK ICE cotton futures edged marginally higher on Tuesday ahead of a monthly crop supply and demand report from the US government. The US Department of Agriculture’s World Agricultural Supply and Demand Estimates (WASDE) report is due on Wednesday.

Cotton contracts for December settled up 0.38 cent, or 0.56 percent, at 67.67 cents per lb. It traded within a range of 66.72 and 67.79 cents a lb.

Prices suffered their biggest one-day percentage drop in over two weeks in the previous session as speculators kept selling their net long positions on expectations of higher new crop.

“The market settled around a comfortable range ahead of the WASDE report. You had liquidation of longs over the past two sessions and (markets) managed to find some sort of support to consolidate ahead of the big event,” said Anestis Arampatzis, risk management consultant with INTL FCStone.

“The overall market sentiment is pointing towards a mild increase in the global production, an increase in the US exports while also a marginal decrease in the US production, beginning and ending stock.”

The Thomson Reuters CoreCommodity CRB Index, which tracks 19 commodities, was up 0.68 percent. Total futures market volume fell by 3,442 to 19,806 lots. Data showed total open interest fell 658 to 209,733 contracts in the previous session.

“The market has been consolidating between the 66.00-69.00 cents range under light volume... A break on either direction should be anticipated on the near term. The WASDE report along with Thursday’s export sales figures could be the decisive factors on nearby price action,” Arampatzis said. Certificated cotton stocks deliverable as of July 10 totalled 101,897 480-lb bales, down from 106,137 in the previous session.—Reuters