KARACHI, March 24: Cotton market on Friday showed a firm trend as some of leading spinner groups resumed covering purchases at the prevailing prices to cover their forward sales of textiles.

After several lean sessions, big-lot business was witnessed as spinners and mills tried to lift fine lots to spin higher counts of cotton yarn and ginners raised their asking prices.

Most of the deals were finalized Rs25 higher after several sessions’ status quo and dealers said it was now turn of the ginners to hold the price line.

Apart from the revival of mill demand, the other contributory aiding factor was a modest recovery staged by the New York cotton futures amid reports of strong presence of foreign demand from the major end-product users, dealers said.

“No one could deny the fact that spinners and mills still need about 0.4m bales of lint to honour their commitments,” they said, adding “the long-awaited rebound staged by the New York cotton futures has alerted them to stay on the market”.

There is a perception that the strategy adopted by the spinners for the last about two month to keep prices within their parity level may now not be relevant to the developing situation as supply and demand factors are expected to set the future price trend, they added.

The next few weeks could witness a hectic business as spinners and mills will try to grab the floating stock and the consequent increase in prices.

Official spot rates were, therefore, held unchanged although most of the deals were done well above them in physical trading.

New York cotton futures on the other hand rose by 0.77 and 0.83 cents at 52.99 and 54.45 cents per lb for both the ruling May and the forward July contracts respectively.

Ready business was active as about 10,000 bales changed hands as under: 2,400 bales, upper Sindh at Rs2,425 to Rs2,475, 2,000 bales, Sadiqabad at Rs2,450, 4,000 bales, Rahimyar Khan at Rs2,425 to Rs2,475 and 200 bales, Khanpur, low-mic at Rs2,375.