Base metals on the London Metal Exchange closed mostly lower at the end of trading on Monday June 11, with copper, nickel and tin prices recording losses while lead and aluminium made marginal gains.
Falling 0.7% over the afternoon, copper's three-month price has dipped from the five-year highs that pushed its price up to $7,300 per tonne last week. Uncertainty over labor negotiations at BHP Billiton's Escondida mine in Chile caused prices to climb more than 6% in a week. "Copper continues to struggle on reports of Escondida saying over the weekend that it expects to resolve its labor negotiations successfully. Prices had run up for much of last week on expectations that the negotiations would run into difficulties, but we were skeptical about this market view given that the talks had barely started," Edward Meir, analyst at INTL FCStone said. "From the little we can assess from...