April 7 Cotton futures settled higher on
Thursday, snapping a three-day losing streak on a positive
export sales report.

Sales of upland cotton totaled 210,900 running bales for the
week ending March 31, up 144 percent from the previous week,
with shipments hitting a high for the current marketing year,
government data showed.

The export sales figures were fairly broad and healthy, said
Chris Kramedjian, a risk management consultant with INTL FCStone
in Nashville, Tennessee, adding that the "U.S. cotton is
becoming more competitive."

* The front-month May contract on ICE Futures U.S.
settled up 0.28 cent, or 0.48 percent, at 59.03 cents per lb,
after hitting a high of 59.37 cents a lb.

* Total futures market volume rose by 21,356 to 44,467 lots.
Data showed total open interest gained 733 to 223,248 contracts
in the previous session.

* The dollar index was up 0.09 percent. The Thomson
Reuters CoreCommodity CRB Index, which tracks 19
commodities, was down 0.41 percent.

(Reporting by Nallur Sethuraman in Bengaluru; Editing by Alan
Crosby)