KARACHI, March 3: Cotton market on Wednesday maintained steady trend in quiet trading as spinners were not inclined to make fresh commitments apparently anticipating sympathetic fall in local lint prices after steep decline in New York cotton futures.

Floor brokers have been expecting the return of the spinners and mills to the market after two closures on account of Ashura, but they appear to be more interested in the falling world markets rather than local trading.

New York cotton futures during the last two sessions had received massive battering owing to strong speculative liquidation at the higher levels and had fallen by about three cents per lb.

The maturing March contract was quoted below the 70-cent benchmark, off 1.85 cents at 69.90 cents, while the ruling May fell by 2.80 cents at 70.73 cents per lb.

"The fall below the 70-cent mark generates an optimism among the local spinners and mills that the lint prices on NYCE would further decline", market sources said.

In the hope of sympathetic decline in the local prices, they kept to the sidelines awaiting the ginners' reaction. But as the local prices are governed by the supply and demand factors, ginners hold on to their positions until such time spinners resume their covering purchases.

But the general perception is that world prices will fluctuate within the either-way range of 3 cents per lb, between 68 cents on the lower side and 71 cents per lb on the higher side before the arrival of the new crop.

According to latest official figures, the world demand of lint is expected to outstrip the total production by a big margin of 4m bales at 99m bales from 92m bales.

The slowdown in mill buying was also attributed to release of arrival figures of phutti for the fortnight ended Feb 29 by the Pakistan Cotton Ginners Association (PCGA) during the next couple of sessions, which will give fair idea of the total crop.

Floor brokers said spinners are expected to base their future consumption demand of lint on the latest arrival figures and the imports to fill-in the supply gap.

In the absence of any deal in the ready section, official spot rates were firmly held unchanged at the last weekend level. Although some of the local spinners offered to buy low-mic lots but as price of ideas of sellers and buyers failed to find a meeting ground no deals was finalized till late in the evening.