May 11, 2002	Saturday	Safar 27, 1423

KARACHI, May 10: Cotton market on Friday showed a bearish trend as both leading spinners and mills just made enquiries about the fine lots and asking prices but did not bid apparently in a bid to keep ginners at their toes all the time.

Stray lots did, however, change hands as some of the local needy spinners mostly working on short-term basis were not inclined to take risks of low inventory, brokers said.

The notable feature was that some of the ginners from the southern Punjab cotton belt still holding on to fine lots have decided to sell in part at much higher prices than the prevailing ones.

“But most of them are unlucky and fell victim of error of judgement as they did not sell their stocks on the hope that prices could rise above the Rs2,000 level”, says a leading ginner adding “they are lucky enough to get the price of Rs1,700 per maund in a market held hostage by the buyers”.

A wide difference of Rs400 per maund in the selling prices, the lowest being Rs1,275 and the highest Rs1,700 speaks of prevailing market conditions irrespective of the quality premiums.

Although New York cotton futures have resumed their upward journey after having fallen sharply during the last couple of weeks, the local market trend may not be influenced upward in sympathy as it is the victim of both slack demand and higher unsold inventories.

After the liquidation of the matured May settlement, the July contract assumed the role of ruling delivery, while the October settlement made its debut at 36.05 cents per lb on the New York Cotton Exchange on Thursday. Both the contracts rose by 0.25 and 0.20 cents per lb.

Floor brokers said chances of any big change in the prevailing outlook appear remote as supply and demand factors will continue to remain dominant factors in setting the future market trend.

But as the world production is forecast to outstrip the demand by a big margin during the next season amid predictions of higher production figures in the US and other major cotton producing countries and together with large carryover stocks the perceptions of a bull markets are ruled out at this stage, they added.

It was perhaps in this background that the official spot rates were lowered by Rs25 per maund at Rs1,600.

Ready demand was light as till late in the evening about 4,000 bales changed hands as under: 2,000 bales, Hingorja at Rs1,475 on two-month credit, 200 bales, Shahdadpur at Rs1,275, 200 bales, Khanpur at Rs1,600 and 800 bales at Rs1,700.