Jan 23 (Reuters) - ICE cotton futures rose on Wednesday as investors bid for the natural fiber in anticipation of a trade deal between the United States and China.

* The most active cotton contract on ICE Futures U.S. - the March

contract - settled up 0.39 cent, or 0.53 percent, at

73.52 cents per lb. It traded within a range of 72.98 and 74.28 cents a lb.

* “There is an optimism that wasn’t there yesterday about the trade talks between the U.S. and China, which is enough to send cotton up,” said Jack Scoville, vice president at Price Futures Group in Chicago.

* “Some of the panic that we saw yesterday has gone away... and some people who may have sold it on Tuesday are starting to buy today,” he added.

* White House economic adviser Kevin Hassett said on Wednesday he believes that the United States and China could reach a trade deal by a March 1 deadline.

* This comes after the Trump administration rejected an offer from China for preparatory trade talks this week ahead of high-level negotiations scheduled for Jan. 30-31, which pushed cotton lower on Tuesday.

* The trade dispute, between top exporter U.S. and China, the biggest consumer of the natural fiber, largely led to cotton’s first yearly decline in four in 2018.

* “Any comment that comes out which states there could be some end to this stalemate (trade dispute) you will see this cotton market rally,” said Jon Marcus, president of the Lakefront Futures and Options brokerage firm in Chicago.

* The U.S. Department of Agriculture continues to delay several major U.S. and world crop reports and export sales data due to the longest U.S. government shutdown in history

* Total futures market volume fell by 6,723 to 20,358 lots. Data showed total open interest fell 2,426 to 230,808 contracts in the previous session.

* Certificated cotton stocks <CERT-COT-STX> deliverable as of Jan. 22 totaled 123,799 480-lb bales, unchanged from 123,799 in the previous session.

(Reporting by Brijesh Patel in Bengaluru Editing by Leslie Adler)