Cotton Snaps Longest Rally in Two Years; Sugar, Cocoa Decline

Cotton fell for the first time in eight sessions after the government reported slowing exports from the U.S., the world’s top shipper. Sugar and cocoa also dropped, while orange juice and coffee gained.

In the week ended Jan. 17, exports of upland cotton dropped 37 percent to 213,700 running bales from a week earlier, the U.S. Department of Agriculture said today. Prices climbed 9.8 percent in the past seven sessions, the longest rally in almost two years, on expectations of higher demand from China, the biggest consumer.

“There isn’t an export number that could’ve been high enough to sustain that rally,” Sharon Johnson, a senior cotton specialist at Roswell, Georgia-based Knight Futures, said in a telephone interview. “The market was primed for a sizable setback.”

Cotton for March delivery dropped 1.2 percent to 81.87 cents a pound at 11:12 a.m. on ICE Futures in New York. A close at that price would be the biggest loss since Dec. 28.

A running bale weighs 500 pounds, or 22 kilograms.

Also in New York, raw-sugar futures for delivery in March slumped 0.8 percent to 18.35 cents a pound, on pace for the eighth loss in nine sessions.

Cocoa futures for March delivery fell 0.9 percent to $2,175 a metric ton on ICE, heading for the fourth loss in five sessions.

Orange-juice futures for March delivery climbed 0.2 percent to $1.134 a pound in New York, while arabica-coffee futures for March delivery gained 0.7 percent to $1.4755 a pound.

To contact the reporter on this story: Oliver Renick in Chicago at orenick1@bloomberg.net

To contact the editor responsible for this story: Steve Stroth at sstroth@bloomberg.net