The most-traded April copper contract on the Shanghai Futures Exchange climbed 2.6 percent to 42,120 yuan ($6,748) a tonne on Friday. Physical consumption has dimmed ahead of Chinese public holidays that start on Wednesday, but traders said they were reluctant to short copper in case of a surprise interest rate cut by China's central bank, after a run of poor data.
That was likely to keep trade rangebound until mid-March, they said. "One of the classic seasonal dynamics, is that post-Chinese New Year there is a ramp up in buying specifically in metals like copper, so people are typically mindful of that as well as the slowdown during the Chinese New Year," said analyst Mark Keenan of Societe Generale in Singapore. In news that supported prices, BHP Billiton said that it expected to lose between 60,000-70,000 tonnes of copper output this financial year as a result of an outage at its biggest mill at its Olympic Dam operations in South Australia. That would wipe out more than a quarter of the year's surplus of 221,000 tonnes, according to a median forecast of analysts polled by Reuters last month.
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