* 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.