Cotton Soars By Daily Limit for Third Day
March 1, 2011 By Jae Hur
Bloomberg
Cotton futures surged by the daily limit for a third day in New York amid concern that global supplies will fail to keep pace with rising demand in China, the world’s biggest consumer.
The May-delivery contract rose 7 cents, or 3.7 percent, to $1.9823 a pound on ICE Futures U.S. at 4 p.m. Tokyo time. The fiber, which reached a record $2.0893 on Feb. 18, gained 14 percent last month. Zhengzhou futures in China also jumped.
“After last week’s drop, funds are returning to the market where supplies are very tight,” said Toshimitsu Kawanabe, an analyst at commodity broker Central Shoji Co.
Cotton dropped 5.5 percent last week, the first weekly loss in seven weeks and the biggest drop since November. The fiber is still the best-performer this year among the 19 commodities on the Thomson Reuters/Jefferies CRB Index.
China’s January cotton imports rose 31 percent from a year earlier to 390,720 metric tons, the customs agency said Feb. 24. The country’s imports jumped 86 percent to 2.84 million tons in 2010 from a year earlier. Output declined 6.3 percent to 5.97 million tons (27.4 million bales) last year, the National Bureau of Statistics said yesterday.
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