NEW YORK, Nov 28 (Reuters) - Cotton futures finished with
small gains Monday on buying by small investors although fiber
contracts were off their session highs after initial advances
ran out of gas, analysts said.

The key March cotton futures rose 0.48 cent to end
at 91.35 cents per lb, moving from 90.85 to 92.81 cents. The
range was almost comparable to Friday's 90.01 to 91.89 cents
band.

Total volume traded on Monday was over 9,600 lots, almost
60 percent below the 30-day norm, preliminary Thomson Reuters
data showed.

'I think the bounce ... was due to the weaker dollar and
strong outside markets. And then it just kind of faded,' said
Mike Stevens, an independent cotton analyst in Louisiana.
A softer dollar would often make dollar-denominated
commodity products cheaper for investors.

World stocks jumped and commodity prices also rose as
optimism grew that European leaders were readying a plan to
resolve the region's long-running debt crisis.

Traders said cotton futures were being supported partly by
the buying of China, the world's top producer and consumer of
cotton, over the past few weeks.

In the last three weeks, the U.S. Agriculture Department's
weekly export sales report said China has bought over 2.3
million running bales (a bale=500 lbs) as it replenishes state
stocks which have been run down to keep domestic prices
stable.

Open interest in the cotton market, usually taken as an
indicator of investor exposure in the market, stood at 137,009
lots as of Nov 25, from the prior session's tally of 136,858
lots, exchange data showed.

Total volume traded Friday in the market reached 8,547
lots, from the previous tally of 14,825 lots, ICE futures U.S.
data said.