Copper ends down

Copper backed away from a near three-week high to end down on Friday as rising oil prices and escalating violence in North Africa eclipsed initial euphoria from upbeat employment data in the United States. A cautious tone swept across the broader market as the Libyan turmoil drove investors to seek safe-haven assets in front of the weekend.
"What I do see here is weak equity prices and volatile equity prices leading to a general consumable commodity risk-off, with money really moving into gold, silver, oil and oil products," said Sterling Smith, an analyst for Country Hedging Inc in St. Paul, Minnesota. "There's increasing nervousness about the Middle East ... especially over the weekend."
London Metal Exchange (LME) three-month copper peaked at $9,999 per tonne, its highest level since February 15, when the price rallied to a record $10,190. It ended at $9,895, down $15 from a last bid of $9,910 on Thursday. Despite the negative close, it gained about 1.5 percent on the week, snapping three consecutive weekly losses.
COMEX copper for May delivery shed 0.45 cent to settle at $4.4855 per lb, after dealing between $4.4650 and $4.5540. "The one huge factor is crude oil," said Jeff Pritchard, broker and analyst with Altavest Worldwide Trading in Mission Viejo, California.
Torsten Slok, chief international economist with Deutsche Bank Securities, said a $150 crude oil price would likely take 2 percentage points off of US GDP. Also weighing on the market, stocks of copper in LME warehouses last rose 1,250 tonnes to 425,300 tonnes, their highest level since last July as traders cited weakening physical demand.
"We would argue that industrial metals may find it difficult to break higher in the near term as long as inventories do not register meaningful outflows again," Credit Suisse said in a note. The growing piles of metal have moved the copper curve into an $8.50 contango - a discount for cash versus three-month material - from a $70 backwardation, or the premium for cash over three-month material, in mid-December.
Aluminium stocks climbed 7,250 tonnes to 4,606,200 tonnes, within reach of a record high 4,640,750 hit in January 2010. Aluminum finished at $2,600, from a last bid of $2,611 on Thursday.