London copper steadies, but China worries sap strength

U.S. benchmark West Texas Intermediate for delivery in October jumped $US2.00, or 4.1 per cent, on Monday to $US46.68 a barrel on the New York Mercantile Exchange, almost erasing Friday’s loss.

Besides mining, Chinese companies are also welcome to invest in Chilean infrastructure in other areas, said Williams, adding that recent structural reforms in Chile targeting taxes, education and working conditions have created conditions for Chinese investment.

“But there’s a ton of crude out there”, he said.

Globally, London copper slipped to the weakest in a fortnight in early trade at the London Metal Exchange, as jitters lingered over the health of the global economy after US Federal Reserve last week delayed an interest rate rise.

“The fact that the Fed didn’t raise rates last week is going to lend some sort of long-term support to the market”.

Aluminium finished up 0.2 per cent at $US1579 a tonne.

“The PMIs (purchasing managers indexes) were not too good”, said analyst Helen Lau of Argonaut Securities in Hong Kong.

Silver rose 0.1 per cent at $US15.17 an ounce, while platinum was down 1.3 per cent at $US966.25 an ounce and palladium was up 1.3 per cent at $US610.75 an ounce. “This should cause the market to tighten and allow the copper price to recover”, said Commerzbank in a note.

Three-month copper on the LME hit an intraday low of $US5013.50 per tonne, the weakest since August 27, before paring losses to close down 0.1 per cent at $US5051. “While this growth has now slowed to around 7 percent, China will always be important to us due to its sheer volume of demand for copper”, she said. “Unless China comes up with more definite policies to stimulate the economy, bearish prices will most likely continue”.

Copper prices fell to a four-week low on persistent concern about demand growth in top consumer China against a backdrop of ample supply ahead of holidays in Asia.

Aluminum sagged 0.8 per cent to close at $1,576 a tonne as analysts said fundamentals were worsening with a glut of overproduction and inventories keeping pressure on prices.

Chinese imports of refined copper rose 12% in August from a year earlier to 262,691 metric tons, monthly data from China’s General Administration of Customs.