NEW YORK, Aug 31 (Reuters) - Cotton futures ended slightly
firmer Wednesday on investor buying in another lightly traded
session with analysts saying many players appear to have taken
off for the holiday weekend.

The cotton market will be shut Monday for Labor Day.
The key December cotton contract on ICE Futures U.S.
rose 0.39 cent to close at $1.0581 per lb, trading from $1.046
to $1.0689. It was an inside day since the range was within
Tuesday's $1.0364 to $1.07 band.

On the month, the market was up almost 4 percent.
Volume on Wednesday was around 7,000 lots, more than 40
percent less than the 30-day average, preliminary Thomson
Reuters data showed.

On Monday, the total volume traded stood at 5,502 lots, the
lowest since Dec. 29, 2009, ICE Futures U.S. data showed.

'It's been incredibly slow. I think everybody just decided
to take off,' said Sharon Johnson, senior cotton analyst at
commodities brokerage Penson Futures in Atlanta, Georgia.

Hope for more economic stimulus from the U.S. Federal
Reserve drove buying in equities, oil and metals, which gave a
slight boost to cotton, dealers said..

Cotton traders said the market was range-bound, from 99
cents to $1.10 a lb.

After the holiday weekend, players await the U.S.
Agriculture Department's weekly crop progress report next week
to see how much damage Hurricane Irene inflicted on cotton
plants in North and South Carolina, and Virginia.

The last USDA weekly crop progress report showed 40 percent
of North Carolina's cotton bolls are open for the week ending
Aug. 28, and the figure for South Carolina is 11 percent and 8
percent for Virginia.

The storm hit those states on August 28.

Traders said market players then will look toward the
release of next month's USDA monthly supply/demand report to
get a better idea about world and U.S. supply/demand conditions
in the 2011/12 marketing year (August/July).

The level of investor interest in the cotton market hit
147,646 lots as of Aug. 30, according to exchange data.