Copper closed lower on the London Metal Exchange (LME) on Wednesday after hitting a new record as fund buying and low inventories lifted early sentiment, traders said.
"The market is very influenced by fund flows right now, and those flows could remain quite high, so there is no doubt we could still see these prices for the next month or two," analyst Jon Bergtheil at J.P. Morgan said.
Copper closed at $6,390 a tonne, down $60 after recording a new all-time high of $6,545 on Select.
In addition to fund buying, supply and demand fundamentals were supportive.
"The basic situation is that the world economy is motoring along quite well, but the production side for a lot of these materials is not going so well, particularly for copper, where there has been under-investment, and the price reflects that," a hedge fund source said.
Strong demand from China, which consumes around 20 percent of world's copper, would continue. Investment bank J.P. Morgan forecast that Chinese copper demand would grow by 14.5 percent this year.
In 2005 Chinese demand rose by 12 percent.
Strike worries persisted at Grupo Mexico's La Caridad mine, production problems continued at the Collahuasi mine in Peru and there was still unrest at Freeport's Grasberg mine in Indonesia.
Aluminium slipped $31 to end at $2,682 after touching $2,772, the highest in 17-1/2 years.
Low Chinese primary exports, stronger US orders, falling global stocks, tight alumina supplies and surging energy prices underpinned aluminium, a Barclays Capital daily note said.
"We think a target of $3,000 a tonne for three-months aluminium is reasonable in this environment, not least considering aluminium's underperformance (which until recently was justified) in this commodities bull market."
Zinc closed at $3,155 versus $3,120, after hitting a new record high of $3,195 in early trade.
Lead rose three percent to $1,233 before falling back, closing flat at $1,190.
Nickel ended $75 higher at $18,350.
Nickel was firm, supported by a labour contract expiry at Canadian producer Inco Ltd in May. "When Inco has a problem, the whole world has a problem," Bergtheil said. Tin gained $20 to $9,190.
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