KARACHI, Jan 5: Cotton prices on Thursday remained stable around the previous levels as reports of a lower crop encouraged ginners to hold on to their unsold positions to sell lint at a better price.

Physical trading did not pick up as price ideas of sellers and buyers failed to find a meeting ground. Moreover, spinners and mills also made guarded buying owing to transport problems, floor brokers said.

However, some spinners offered to buy fine lots around Rs2,400 and slight above but inferior lots were neglected, although some of the ginners were inclined to sell it below this rate.

They said the normal trading activity is expected to be resumed after the Eid holidays when the freight rates will be lowered by the cargo haulers to pre-Eid levels.

There is also a perception shared by most of the leading spinners that higher unsold stocks of lint lying in the godowns of ginners would force some of them to lower their asking prices despite a short crop, they said.

As a result, a battle wits is going on between the buyers and the sellers taking toll of ready business daily as was reflected in low volumes.

Meanwhile, spinners say the local as well as foreign demand for cotton yarn is terribly low as end-product users are still formulating their near-term new year requirements and in the process prices have declined.

“Stocks of finished good are piling up, creating liquidity problems for most of us,” spinners claim adding “until consumers resume normal buying our buying capacity will remain curtailed”.

Official spot rates were quoted at the previous levels, while New York cotton futures suffered modest decline of 0.30 and 0.06 cents per lb at 54.94 and 55.75 cents per lb for both the ruling March and the distant contracts respectively.

Ready off-take was light totalling about 3,000 bales which include 1,000 bales, Upper Sindh at Rs2,426 and 200 bales Ahmedpur East and Yazman at 2,400.