Base metals on the London Metal Exchange were mostly higher during morning trading on Monday July 9, rebounding against positive US data last week and a broad recovery in global equity markets.
Climbing 1.6%, copper's three-month price made the largest recovery after closing at its lowest point in almost a year on Friday. Broadly impacted by trade worries and volatile market conditions, copper's price trajectory has been on a persistent downtrend since reaching a fresh 2018 high in mid-June, while zinc, lead and aluminium prices have similarly been under pressure. "Copper has come in for a real bashing in recent days as hedge funds continued to sell copper down in its biggest short-term sell-off since 2011," SP Angel analyst John Meyer said in his morning note. "We feel the move is hugely overdone and may be part of a quasi state-sponsored move to shake markets in protest and opposition to Trump's imposition of tariffs on China," he added. While copper's...