Observers of the copper market are looking at a trend that started in 2001 to determine where the market could find support after five days of successive selling took the price to two-year lows by Monday August 5.
At $5,665 per tonne, the London Metal Exchange's benchmark three-month copper futures contract was down by 5.9% since Tuesday last week, having sold off again on Monday amid a worsening dispute over trade that shows signs of eating into demand for the metal.And having already seen prices drop through several levels of support, technical analysts are looking at a price of just above $5,000 per tonne to be the major level that could either offer support for a long-term bull market or, if broken, signal a bearish outlook.The level was the culmination of a line that stretches back to 2001 and has held the copper price up at its lowest points in the past decade - in early 2009 after the global financial crisis and again in 2015-16 when fears of a hard landing for the Chinese economy rattled the markets."A lot of people are...