KARACHI, Sept 29: Trading on the cotton market on Monday remained insipid as buyers and sellers kept to the sidelines and did not bid for any lot despite reports that some of the ginners lowered their asking prices.

”The pre-Eid holiday mood seems to have gripped the market,” sources said, adding “no one is inclined to take risk owing to a long holiday weekend amid fears that prices could fall further”.

The interesting feature was that not a single deal was reported by the brokerage houses to the Karachi Cotton Association (KCA) on Monday reflecting the spinner mood to “wait-and-see” international developments during the intervening holiday rather than taking delivery risks, some dealers said.

Some leading brokers claimed about 2,000 bales changed hands for delivery after Eid around Rs3,925 per maund, but details were not immediately available.

The current turmoil on the international commodity markets despite talk of a huge US bailout package continued to have negative fallout on the world markets and the local market is not an exception, they said

The continued weakness of the New York cotton futures has raised hopes among the local spinners and mills to go for imports at this stage as world prices are now attractive enough to make up the local crop shortfall, some others said.

According to market sources some of the leading spinners and mills had already signed forward deals with some traditional exporters after the New York cotton futures fell below the 60-cent per lb a couple of weeks earlier for December delivery.

Meanwhile, reports coming from the entire cotton belt indicate that the arrivals of phutti into the ginneries have almost dried up as growers have suspended picking operations owing to Eid and storage problems.

Official spot rates, therefore, did not show any change and were held unchanged at Rs3,900 per maund.