KARACHI, July 11: Cotton market on Wednesday maintained firm trend as spinners and mills made hectic efforts to grab the floating stock but price ideas of sellers and buyers failed to find a meeting ground, floor brokers said.

“Steep speculative rise in the New York cotton futures followed by reports of global crop shortfall seems to have fuelled the current price flare-up,” they said.

Indications are that the New York cotton future prices are heading to set new record during the current season as major world consumers may opt for panic buying despite the fact that the prices of end-products may not record an identical increase.

In late 70s, the New York cotton future prices had soared above the 100-cent per lb and 80-cent plus about 15 years back on report of a short world crop, cotton analysts recalled.

On Wednesday, New York cotton futures were quoted higher by 0.41 and 0.45 cents per lb at 65.16 and 67.08 cents for both the ruling October and the forward December contracts respectively.

Over the last two months, the NYCE futures had risen by 16 cents per lb and some of the leading spinners who had covered their positions below 50 cents were sitting pretty comfortable on their inventories, they added.

The interesting feature was that some of the exporters were selling their stocks to the mills at Rs2,800 per maund as they claimed it was more profitable to sell to the local spinners rather than exporting to other countries.

Some of the leading ginners still hold an unsold stock of 20,000 bales of fine quality but they are said to be unwilling to sell them below Rs3,100.

Spinners were buyers of low-mic lower Sindh new crop around Rs2,900 per maund and made stray forward deals for modest lots, while its counterpart in the Central Punjab was being quoted at Rs3,000 plus.

Official spot rates were again revised upward by Rs25 to Rs2,800 per maund but in the ready section most of the deals were done well above them.

The following are some of the new and current crop deals done in the ready section: 200 bales, Mirpukhas at Rs2,900 ready delivery, 100 bales, Sanghar also at this rate, delivery on Aug 14 and 200 bales, current crop, Vehari at Rs2,975.