Friday, 13 March 2015 20:26
LONDON: Copper slipped from 10-day highs on Wednesday as the dollar regained its poise, though losses were limited by falls in mine output this year and as traders bet that easier lending could improve demand from top consumer China.
The dollar rose against the euro, heading back towards this week’s 12-year highs on the back of the European Central Bank’s bond-buying and the US Federal Reserve’s expected rate increase.
A strong dollar makes dollar-priced metals costly for non-US investors.
Copper, however, received support from Chinese data showing that the country’s banks extended 1.02 trillion yuan ($ 162.87 billion) of new loans in February, well above market expectations.
Three-month copper on the London Metal Exchange was last bid down 0.1 percent in official midday rings to $ 5,837 a tonne, having earlier climbed to $ 5,900, the highest since March 3.
Copper has staged a modest recovery from January’s 5-1/2 year low of $ 5,339.50 on bets that China will experience a seasonally strong second quarter and as analysts continue to trim surplus forecasts.
“There’s doubt that the (copper) surplus is going to emerge given the reductions last year from miners, the run-rate disruptions this year and the price-related cutbacks and closures,” Macquarie analyst Vivienne Lloyd said. Data showed that copper stocks in Shanghai Futures Exchange warehouses rose 9.4 percent from last Friday to 224,340 tonnes, though bullish investors see the supply increases as priced in at current levels.
Across other metals, lead was last bid down 1.4 percent in rings to $ 1,791 a tonne after daily data showed LME stocks rose 16,100 tonnes to 228,700, their highest since December last year.
Nickel was down 0.2 percent at $ 13,875 a tonne and looked set to register a weekly decline of 3 percent.
But Commerzbank was upbeat on the metal’s longer term prospects. “The government in Indonesia appears to be seeing its first successes with the mineral ore export ban that came into force at the beginning of 2014,” it said in a note.
“Eleven nickel smelters will be built in the country by the end of 2016. They have annual production capacities of 6,000 tons of refined nickel, 66,000 tons of ferronickel and 50,000 tons of nickel pig iron.”
Aluminium traded down 0.1 percent in rings at $ 1,746 a tonne, zinc was last bid up 0.1 percent at $ 2,010 a tonne and tin gained 1.3 percent to $ 17,450 a tonne, recovering after hitting its weakest since July 2012 on Thursday.
Copyright Reuters, 2015
