NEW YORK, July 22 (Reuters) - Cotton futures ended slightly higher Friday on investor buying in light trade as players appeared to be marking time ahead of Monday's USDA crop progress report, analysts said.

Benchmark December on ICE Futures U.S. inched up 0.01 cent to close at 98.64 cents per lb, trading from 96.65 cents to $1.0018 which was virtually unchanged from Thursday's 96.75 cents to $1.015 trading band.

For the week, cotton lost 0.82 percent. The contract finished at 96.46 cents last Monday which marked the lowest close for the second-position contract since early October 2010, according to Thomson Reuters data.

On Monday, the market will look toward the USDA's weekly crop progress report to gauge the condition of the U.S. cotton crop. It will be released at 4 p.m. EDT (2000 GMT). Business was light. Volume hit around 9,300 lots at 2:38 p.m. EDT (1738 GMT), more than 60 percent below the 30-day norm, Thomson Reuters preliminary data showed.

"Cotton can't seem to decide what it wants to follow," said Sharon Johnson, senior cotton analyst at commodities brokerage Penson Futures in Atlanta, Georgia. Corn and wheat futures were sharply up but soybean futures were almost flat.

Global stocks were mixed, the euro was lower as the focus turned back to the effort to raise the U.S. debt ceiling to avert a ruinous default.

"Unless cotton closes above 99.46 cents, basis December, we may have to wait until 9th week down (August 1-5) for a more meaningful pre-harvest low," Johnson concluded in a report.

Analysts digested news that cotton demand and the pace of Indian cotton exports would dictate price movements in the upcoming 2011/12 marketing year (August/July), the chief executive of the world's biggest cotton merchant said Friday.

Trading turned quiet also partly because dealings in the December/March spread seem to have stabilized given the thinness of volume in Friday's session.