June 29 (Reuters) - ICE cotton futures edged lower on Thursday with the market looking ahead to Friday's annual planted acreage report from the U.S. Agriculture Department, which is widely expected to show an uptick in planted acres.

"The market is really looking forward ... (to the) acreage report tomorrow and expecting a bearish number," said Peter Egli, director of risk management at British merchant Plexus Cotton.

Analysts expect the USDA to raise its estimate of U.S. cotton plantings to 12.278 million acres, higher than the USDA March forecast of 12.233 million and USDA final 2016 figure of 10.075 million.

"At the moment nobody really wants to buy the market, the traders do not want to buy because they are expecting a big crop and speculators do not want to buy because technicals have broken down."

The December cotton contract on ICE Futures , settled down 0.41 cent, or 0.61 percent, at 67.24 cents per lb. It traded within a range of 67.04 and 67.77 cents a lb.

Prices of the natural fiber hit nearly 10-month lows earlier this week. The market was also technically oversold at around 26 on the relative strength index (RSI), below the oversold level of 30.

"Every cotton growing area in the world has expanded acreage this year and most are off to a very good start, while demand is only increasing at a fractional clip," said Ron Lee, general manager at McCleskey Cotton in Bronwood, Georgia, in a note.

Sales of upland cotton for the 2016/2017 crop year totaled 261,300 running bales in the week ended June 22, up 56 percent from the previous week, the weekly export sales data from the U.S. Department of Agriculture showed.

"Most people expected good (export sales) numbers ... We are really selling out of current crop but nobody knows yet how big the new crop is going to be, whether it's going to be good quality and whether it's going to be on time," Egli said. "The market is taking a bit of a risk."

Total futures market volume rose by 859 to 16,375 lots. Data showed total open interest gained 887 to 201,344 contracts in the previous session. Certificated cotton stocks deliverable as of June 28 totaled 312,472 480-lb bales, down from 314,986 in the previous session.

(Reporting by Swati Verma in Bengaluru; Editing by Steve Orlofsky)