KARACHI, May 8: Physical trading on the cotton market on Wednesday was relatively slow as spinners again withdrew to the sidelines after Tuesday’s hurricane buying at the dips amid fears of law and order situation in the backdrop of suicide bomb attack, killing a dozen persons near a local hotel.

Most of the time both the buyers and sellers remained busy discussing the killing of foreigners and its impact on the local trade and industry rather than making fresh commitments, dealers said.

The market may take a couple of days to resume normal trading as negative impact of the killing of foreigners and its impact on foreign demand for textiles could set the future market direction, they say.

It was quite a shock for the ginners who have decided to lower their asking prices in the absence of strong mill demand and their move proved productive as they managed to sell 20,000 bales including some big lots after several dull sessions, they added.

But on Wednesday they kept awaiting any offer from the spinners throughout the day but no one among appears to be in a obliging mood.

The killing of the foreigners in the bomb blast could halt the outflow of exports of lint, which have been picking up modestly for the last couple of weeks.

An idea of improvement in export sales may well be had from the fact that during the last two days about 8,000 bales were sold to a number of Far Eastern countries, notably Indonesia, Taiwan and Thailand.

“Spinners will continue to play hide-and-seek game with the ginners to keep them at their toes all the time finally obliging them to liquidate long positions at the lower levels”, market sources said.

Although the sentiment in part was influenced bearishly by the bomb blast brokers say spinners being in a comfortable supply position will re-enter the market according to their own perceptions rather than the prevailing market conditions, they added.

Official spot rates resisted fresh decline and were held unchanged but the New York cotton future resumed their downward drift and tended lower by 0.58 and 0.54 cents at 31.47 and 33.11 cents per lb for both the maturing May and the distant July settlements respectively.

Ready offtake was light but unconfirmed reports say some lots did change hands in the southern Punjab cotton belt at the lower rates mostly below Rs1,600 per maund.