Henrik,
I tried setting the MAXCNT to 65535 and already had the POSCNT in the middle. At first it rolled immediately, just like before, after one step:
ie... 2767 -> 5535 -> 0 or 2767 -> 5535 -> 0. Then, before I posted back with another question, I thought I had better try your exact setup...
Turns out that having it in
INDX Reset mode (QEICON=xxxx01xx), versus
POSCNT=MAXCNT Reset mode (QEICON=xxxx10xx) made it jump to MAXCNT, even though I wasn't using a Index pulse.

Thanks for helping me sort this out.
Mark