KARACHI, May 8: The cotton market on Tuesday witnessed listless trading as ginners and mills stayed on the sidelines. However, the overnight declining trend in prices came to a halt.

Floor brokers said that diminished stocks coupled with reservations about the quality of cotton held by ginners kept spinners away. Nevertheless, some needy mills strived hard to get hold of some stocks to meet their immediate needs.

The declining trend in raw cotton prices on the world market was also taking its toll on the domestic market where prices tend to fall further till the arrival of new crop.

The New York cotton market for the last one week had been witnessing a choppy trend as all the future contracts were now being quoted below 90 cents per lb.

Cotton analyst Naseem Usman said that with the climate change estimates of any crop has become difficult and unpredictable because flash floods and heavy rains may cause damage to crops.

The Karachi Cotton Association (KCA) spot rates remained unchanged at overnight level. No notable deals were reported on the ready counter.