KARACHI, March 21: The cotton market on Wednesday consolidated previous gains but the physical activity again slowed down as leading spinners and mills again adhered to the sidelines apparently awaiting fresh developments on the global trading centres.
An unsold stock of 0.771m bales, with the ginners signals that prices are expected to rise from the current level after spinners and mills resumed their normal covering operations, market sources said.
But spinners and holding the price line to stay away from the active market to keep ginners in a pressure and in a way maintained the status quo for the last couple of weeks after having kept prices well below the Rs6,000 per maund level.
Although the textile sector has covered a good part of their annual consumption needs at 12.778m bales, out of the total arrivals of 14.548m bales, they still need more than a million bales to meet their foreign demand and that could heat up the market in due course, they added.
Stray lots of an average quality, however, did change hands between Rs5,250 to Rs5,450 per maund but low quality lint from the central Punjab cotton belt was traded as low as Rs3,800 to Rs4,000 per maund.
Floor brokers said ginners are busy in mopping operations and are said to be holding back stock of fine lots, while trying to dispose of inferior lots at any rate.
Official spot rates were quoted unchanged at Rs5,300 per maund but in the ready market most of the deals were based on quality.
The New York cotton futures on the other hand failed to sustain the overnight recovery as both the contracts were quoted again lower by 1.18 cents per lb for both the ruling May and the forward July contracts at 87.90 and 88.72 respectively.
The following are some of the deals reported in the ready section by the Karachi Brokers Forum on Wednesday, all deals from the Punjab ginneries: 400 bales, Lodhran at Rs5,450, 200 bales, Multan at Rs5,400, 400 bales, Gillanwal at Rs5,350 and
200 bales, Haroonabad at Rs5,250, 400 bales (low quality), Chichawatni and Sahiwal at Rs3,800 to Rs4,000 respectively.
Source: http://www.dawn.com/2012/03/22/slow-trading-on-cotton-market-5.html
