* Market nudged lower on extended profit-taking
* Top consumer China on extended holiday break
* Trade eyes release of USDA's crop progress report Monday
NEW YORK, Oct 4 (Reuters) - Cotton futures finished near a three-week low Monday on follow-through investor sales and profit-taking by players taking cash off the table after fiber contracts sprang to a 15-year high last week, brokers said.
ICE Futures U.S. benchmark December cotton contract CTZ0 shed 0.19 cent to end at 97.83 cents per lb. It was the lowest close for the second position contract since the middle of September. The contract traded from 95.31 to 98.47 cents.
Total volume traded was heavy as it reached 26,650 lots at 2:50 p.m. EDT (1850 GMT), more than 50 percent up on the 30-day average at 17,235 lots, preliminary Thomson Reuters data showed.
"People are taking a little breather," said Bill Raffety, an analyst for commodities futures brokerage Penson GHCO.
The week-long holiday break in top consumer China, which will not reopen for business until Friday, led to modest business.
Mike Stevens, an independent cotton analyst in Mandeville, Louisiana, said mill fixation buying lifted the market from its lows for the day.
"Mills took advantage of the sell off to fix the prices of purchases made 'on-call'," he said, referring to purchases of cotton by mills who did not fix the price and waited until values cooled off.
Analysts said it was difficult to say if the rally was done especially with the Chinese not expected back until next week.
Demand is still running at a strong level and prices are still within sight of their 15-year top.
But the market has been rallying since late July and is in need of a downward correction because it is heavily overbought, analysts said.
Cotton had climbed more than 33 percent during the third quarter, its best quarterly performance since 1994, Thomson Reuters data showed.
Brokers Flanagan Trading Corp. sees resistance in the December cotton contract at 98.65 and 99.50 cents, with support to be found at 97 and 95.80 cents.
Volume traded on Friday reached 20,034 lots, data from ICE Futures U.S. said.