US copper futures finished lightly mixed on Thursday after tossing back and forth around unchanged levels, and traders said most players watched from the sidelines with only a few locals trading by the end.
Most players kept an eye on Chile's railway strike in the country's copper producing region. The labour stoppage drove prices up to new contract highs on Wednesday, with some light follow up buying on Thursday.
"It looks very strong, the (Chilean) strike is somewhat constructive, and there is a lot of strong economic data coming out. There's just no bearish trigger to bring the prices down," said one copper analyst.
Even when copper has fallen recently, traders said many players regard declines as a buying opportunities. Benchmark March futures at the Comex division of the New York Mercantile Exchange were down 0.15 cent to end at $2.03 a lb., near the contract peak at $2.0360 set on Thursday.
Spot December copper settled 0.95 cent higher at $2.17 a lb., below the $2.1940 record set on Friday.
Volume remained light with Comex estimating just 8,000 lots of copper traded by the close, similar to Wednesday's 8,813 lots.
A railway workers strike in top copper producer Chile's major mining region entered its second day. Some worried it could stall copper deliveries to an already tight market. Some traders said they thought the problem had been remedied with the company's contingency plan to bring in outsiders.
But, the union said it had contested the plan as illegal and asked authorities to intervene. In addition, the president of the cargo workers union told Reuters he was in touch with unions at copper mines served by the railway, including those at giant Codelco Nortek, who were expressing "solidarity" with the rail workers.
The railway serves some of Chile's major copper mines, including state-owned Codelco North, BHP Billion's huge Escondido open-pit mine, and Placer Dome's Zaldivar mine. Some 365 union workers at FCAB, or Ferrocarril de Antofagasta a Bolivia, have been negotiating with the company for a new labour contract since the old one expired on November 30.
In other news, a manufacturing group said on Thursday that the US factory sector is poised to grow through 2007, although the pace of expansion is slowing. The report said 20 out of 27 industries are seeing stronger new orders or production than in third quarter 2004.
While some industries using copper, like high-tech and computers, were among growth leaders, the group said it anticipated a 9 percent decline in the housing sector in 2006. LME copper warehouse inventories fell for the third day in a row.
On Thursday withdrawals totalled 625 tonnes to 73,600 tonnes. Comex inventories have remained unchanged at 3,681 short tons since mid-October. London Metal Exchange three-month copper finished on Thursday at $4,462 a tonne, up from Wednesday's close at $4,452.
It rose to a fresh all-time peak at $4,472 a tonne on Thursday.
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