KARACHI, Dec 6: Pre-eid holiday mood prevailed on the cotton market on Saturday as buyers and sellers kept to the sidelines most of the time because of delivery problems and fresh limit-fall in the New York cotton futures.

Floor brokers said spinners were anticipating further fall in local prices in the backdrop of continued bear onslaught on the New York cotton futures market and preferred to resume covering purchases after the eid holidays.

The New York cotton futures on Friday fell below the benchmark of 40 cents per lb at 39.33 paving the way for fresh erosions in the coming sessions. The ruling March settlement also fell by 2.23 cents at 41.37 cents per lb.

An idea of prevailing sluggishness may well be had from the fact that not a single deal was reported by any of the brokerage house, although in normal pre-eid holiday session some of the spinners and mills cover forward positions against post-eid holiday delivery, market sources said.

They said the general perception was that prices could fall further when the trading resumes owing to pent-up selling by some of the ginners.

Analysts said the resumption of market support operations by the TCP seemed to have failed growers or ginners to hold onto their positions for a better price as there appeared to be a panic among them for no apparent reason.

Meanwhile, private sector exporters have registered export contracts totalling 0.206m bales of both old and new crop up to Nov 11, 2008 with the Trade Development Authority of Pakistan (TDAP) and have shipped 0.162m bales to various destinations up to Nov 30, 2008.

Official spot rates were again held unchanged at the overnight level of Rs2,950 per maund for want of demand.

Dull conditions prevailed on the ready section where no deal was reported till late in the evening.