The current bullish trend for copper shows no sign of slowing just yet with the red metal touching a 3 year high largely driven by increasing demand from China(FXI, quote), along with a fall in inventories in the London warehouses.
Commodities price are firmer today with base and especially precious metals ending a bad run off losses, while crude oil has extended its gains from the day before when it rallied sharply on the back of the weekly US oil inventories report.
The rally for copper finally came to an abrupt halt yesterday as weak economic trade data news from China dealt the base metal a mortal blow, sending it plunging lower and closing the session with the wide spread down candle on very high volume, and signalling the end to the rally of September.
As global markets return to business after the summer recess, and commodity markets attempt to find some much needed traction, the story for copper is very different as it continues to remain range bound and waterlogged across all the slower time frames.
After the malaise of the last few months, copper finally nailed a key technical level firmly into place on Friday as the red metal surged higher, closing the session with a wide spread up candle supported with excellent volume, thereby confirming the validity of the move higher.
The start of the new year has seen no let up in the torrid time for commodities and commodity currencies, but for copper the continued uncertainty in China (FXI, quote) coupled with US dollar (UUP, quote) strength and lack of global economic growth continues to weigh particularly heavily, with the base metal breaking through the psychological $2.00 per lb price point, and currently trading at $1.965 per lb at time
Copper, like many other commodities holds a mirror to the Reuters Jeffries CRB index, which continues to wallow in a sea of bearish sentiment on the daily chart.
Copper, along with several of the other principal base metals fell sharply this week as a resurgent US dollar drove many commodities lower, with both gold and silver also selling off strongly. For the base metals market it was Nickel which saw the most dramatic price moves, falling over 5.5% with copper and zinc both falling over 2 %, with tin one of the few commodities closing higher.
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Speculation on China’s demand for copper (JJC, quote) has sent copper to a seven week high this morning of $3.09 not seen since March 7th.
