KARACHI, July 10: Cotton market on Thursday maintained a firm trend as prices were again quoted higher as spinners and mills tried to grab the floating stock of the new crop.

Although the current crop rates were held unchanged at Rs3,650 per maund, new crop from the central Punjab and stray lots from the lower Sindh ginnery were traded as higher as Rs3,900 per maund, floor brokers said.

A net rise of Rs100 per maund during the week indicates that spinners are fully booked for the current quarter, starting from July 1 and in the process of covering their forward sales of cotton yarn and cloth, they said.

“Fresh prices flare-up is not supply based,” said a ginner, adding, “spinners and mills are out to pick up all the ready lots for prompt delivery and for good reasons too.”

“New crop prices could stabilise around Rs4,000 per maund if mills continued to make panic buying in the coming weeks also,” he fears, adding, “no one could deny the ginner demand beyond this level if sanity does not return to cotton trade.”

Market sources said the price war among leading spinners to grab to the ready stocks may push prices to any highs in the coming weeks and their weaker links would remain at the receiving end as they are in no mood to follow them.

They said spinners and mills should have played safe until the size of the crop was partially known but should not base their speculative buying on rumours about the pest attack in some of the areas in the Punjab cotton belt.

Meanwhile, New York futures, after having massive battering during the week on selling trigged by higher US crop projections, staged rebound of 1.31 and 1.50 cents per lb at 66.25 and 70.31 for both the ruling July and forward October contracts, respectively.

Mills ready off-take was active, totaling about 5,000 bales, the following being some of the notable deals.

SINDH TYPE: 200 bales, Sanghar at Rs3,900, 800 bales, Burewala also at this rates, 600, 800, 400 bales each Arifwala, Chichawatni, Mian Channu Haroonabad and Sahiwal respectively at Rs3,875 to Rs3,900 and 200 bales, Dipalpur at Rs3,875.