Significant demand pushed up the price of cotton on Thursday by the maximum allowable amount on ICE Futures U.S., Bloomberg reports.
For week ending December 2, exports of the soft fiber amounted to 323,356 bales, 21 percent higher than figures from one year earlier, according to the Agriculture Department. Prior to Thursday, futures for cotton skyrocketed 75 percent in 2010.
"That's a big shipment number," Keith Brown, president of Keith Brown & Co., a brokerage in Moultrie, Georgia, told Bloomberg. "These numbers are healthy."
As the world's biggest exporter of cotton, the U.S. is projected to export 15.8 million bales for year ending July 31, representing a increase from the 12.04 million that were shipped last year. That increase is the soft commodity's largest since 1973.
As the globe's largest consumer of cotton, China might import 15 million bales, which is an increase from last year's figures of 10.9 million.
March-delivery cotton climbed 0.04 cents to $1.3595 per pound on Thursday morning, representing a rise of three percent. The soft fiber continued climbing on Friday to $1.3737 per pound just before 10 a.m. The price of cotton reached the record amount of $1.5195 on November 10.
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