Copper fell to within a few cents of its year-to-date lows early Monday morning, hit by cooling demand concerns in China following data that showed the country’s vast manufacturing sector slow down in April.
But prices managed to recover from their losses at the New York open, supported by a firmer tone on Wall Street following the confirmation that Al Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden had been killed by U.S. forces.
In overnight business, copper extended last week’s more than 5-percent bearish rout after China reported its official purchasing managers’ index slipped to 52.9 in April from 53.4 in March, well shy of market forecasts for an increase to 54.0.
The slowdown suggested the government’s tightening efforts have weighed on the world’s second-largest economy more heavily than expected.
“I think the thought is whether or not these tightening policies are going to engineer … something soft or something much more abrupt,” said Sean McGillivray, vice president and head of asset allocation for Great Pacific Wealth Management in Oregon.
In the United States, the pace of growth in the manufacturing sector slowed in April for a second straight month, but input prices were at their highest in nearly three years.
The July COMEX copper contract initially fell as far as 7.15 cents, or 1.7 percent, to an early-session low at $4.1075 per lb, close to its yearly low at $4.0950 per lb, hit on March 15.
As that line of support held, copper prices bounced back into positive territory, to trade up 0.30 cent at $4.1820 by 10:29 a.m. EDT (1429 GMT).
The killing of Osama bin Laden helped give lift to global stocks. As Wall Street opened higher and European equities climbed for an eighth straight session, more risk returned to the copper market, enabling prices to recover to near unchanged.
“Barring this development, we’d probably be seeing a lot more red today,” McGillivray said.
Copper also found support from the currency markets, with the euro remaining near a 17-month high against the dollar in response to surprisingly strong manufacturing data in the euro zone.
European manufacturing data continued to boost the notion that growth in the 17-country euro zone’s core economies was strong, boosting the case for higher rates.
Both the London Metal Exchange (LME) and the Shanghai Futures Exchange are closed Monday for public holidays.
Copper’s near-term direction was skewed to the downside. Last week, prices crumbled under a negative technical picture, with the front-month May contract breaking down below key trendline support around $4.20 per lb.
Fundamentally, demand prospects continued to be muddied by a sustained softness in China’s appetite, reflected in a generally bearish trend in London warehouse stock flows since mid-December.
LME copper stocks stand at 463,650 tonnes, their highest level since mid-June, the latest data showed.
Despite the builds in warehouse stocks, the global copper market held a 20,000-tonne production deficit in January, versus a surplus of 86,000 tonnes in the same month a year ago, the International Copper Study Group (ICSG) said on Friday.
On the production front, copper output in Zambia, Africa’s top producer of the metal, will rise to 2 million tonnes by 2015 from around 900,000 tonnes this year as new mines open and others are expanded, the country’s finance minister said on Saturday.
© Thomson Reuters 2011