US MIDDAY: copper rallies

Copper futures rose in response to stronger demand implications from US economic data released on Friday and, shrugging off its recent pattern, ignored the dollar's gains, traders said. "I think it's showing some unexpected strength in the face of the dollar. It's separating itself from the dollar and showing some real underlying strength in copper," a trader said.
Once copper held up after healthier-than-expected economic numbers came out, he said, some copper players who sold thinking the red metal would drop like gold did in response to dollar strength had to cover their short positions instead.
At the COMEX division of the New York Mercantile Exchange, benchmark March copper gained 1.20 cent to $1.3930 a lb., after trading from $1.3750 to $1.3990 a lb.
Spot January rose 0.65 cent to $1.4180. Contracts out to September traded and rose 0.10 to 0.55 cent. COMEX estimated 10 am EST volume at a thin 2,000 lots.