KARACHI, July 1: The cotton market on Thursday lacked normal trading interest as spinners again kept to the sidelines closely watching the price trends on the major trading centres.

Some lots of low-mic lint, however, changed hands at much lower rates as some of the local spinners purchased them for blending purposes, market sources said. Floor brokers said highly erratic price movements on the New York Cotton Exchange for the last couple of weeks has virtually taken steam out of the local market.

"Spinners and mills appear to be in a fix and could not precisely decide whether to go for more foreign lint or wait for further fall in local prices," they said. Although they still need about half a million bales to cover their forward positions before the arrival of new crop from the lower Sindh cotton belt, they are reluctant to bail out the ginners from the standoff in the ready business.

New York cotton futures appear to be under a speculative squeeze as they rise sharply one day and the very next day end with limit-loss as speculative forces did not allow the users the world over to set their priorities.

Both the maturing July and the new crop October settlements were quoted lower by 1.45 cents and 1.32 cents per lb at 48.25 and 51.20 cents per lb, respectively. Rolling over of forward positions from the matured July contract to the new crop October settlement is also one of the negative factors keeping the future market unsettled.

But on the other hand local prices stayed unchanged after having declined by Rs75 during the last couple of sessions, but the spinners are not inclined to buy at their asking prices.

Some of the spinners are, however, active to buy low-mic lint used to spin low counts of cotton yarn for some unorganized sectors, dealers said. It is also used for blending purposes with the fine variety of lint to produce higher counts of cotton yarn for export markets, they said.

Some of the ginners in the central Sindh cotton belt still hold stray stocks of low-mic lint and are selling it between Rs2,400 and Rs2,600 per maund depending on the quality.

There was no change in the official spot rates, which were firmly held at the last levels. Ready offtake was light totalling about 5,000 bales of inferior varieties as under: 2,253 bales, Moro at Rs2,425 and 2,293 bales, Dadu at Rs2,600.