NEW YORK, Dec 8 (Reuters) - U.S. cotton futures closed
mixed Wednesday as players braced for reports due from the U.S.
Agriculture Department on Thursday and Friday, brokers said.

The benchmark March cotton contract on ICE Futures
U.S. rose 1.58 cents to end at $1.3195 per lb, after moving
from $1.2642 to $1.3372. The rest of the board ranged from 2.60
cents lower to 0.89 cent firmer.

Volume traded hit 24,762 lots, over a third below the
30-day average of 35,335 lots, Thomson Reuters preliminary data
showed.

Cotton is the best performing commodity in the
Reuters-Jefferies commodity index, up nearly 75 percent
year-to-date.

(Graphic: http://link.reuters.com/kew48n)

Sharon Johnson, senior cotton analyst for commodity
brokerage Penson Futures in Atlanta, said fiber contracts were
'choppy' and it was fairly easy to yank fiber contracts either
way given how thin the volume was.

Analysts said fiber contracts may have received a boost
from a mixed bag of commercial and investor buying.

Chinese cotton prices did not provide any inspiration to
the market as the May cotton futures was last done at
26,360 yuan per tonne, down 550 on the day.

Traders awaited a pair of reports from the U.S. Agriculture
Department -- weekly export sales data on Thursday and the
USDA's monthly supply/demand data on Friday.

Brokers forecast U.S. cotton export sales ranging from
300,000 to 400,000 running bales (RBs, 500-lbs each), against
total sales in last week's data of 636,900 RBs.

The market will also be waiting for any changes in the
monthly supply/demand report, especially it it shows a tight
supply situation getting squeezed further and possibly
reigniting a rally in the market.

Looking farther out, market players will turn to
prospective spring 2011 cotton plantings in countries such as
the United States and China to see if producers will be able to
churn out more cotton.

Analytical firm Informa Economics raised its U.S. cotton
plantings forecast in 2011 to 12.2 million acres, a four-year
high and nearly 12 percent higher than 2010 cotton sowings of
10.909 million acres.