New York copper settled moderately lower on Friday, knocked off early highs by a climbing dollar, but selling became more anemic as the day progressed and the price remained within its recent sideways pattern, traders said.
"During Thursday's session copper met with technical selling when it couldn't break through the high, which led to a sell-off and people taking profits. Today, the dollar was pressuring copper all day. So people who had decided to get on the long side later in the day decided the dollar's modest recovery was too much to handle," said Eric Wittenauer, futures analyst with A.G.
Edwards in St. Louis. Copper for December delivery on the New York Mercantile Exchange's COMEX division ended 1.65 cents lower at $3.6525 per lb. Prices held within their recent trading band, extending their sideways range between $3.6305 and $3.6930.
COMEX estimated final copper volume at 11,906 lots. Open interest increased on Thursday by 758 lots to 88,406 lots. Traders said volumes remained thin in the aftermath of this week's annual London Metal Exchange events in London.
Copper gained shortly after release of higher-than-expected US retail sales and tamer core inflation data than predicted because of the stronger economic growth implied by the data. But copper later fell prey to profit takers ahead of the weekend, traders said.
US retailers' sales rose a bigger-than-expected 0.6 percent in September as gasoline stations turned in their strongest growth since May. Analysts polled by Reuters were expecting a 0.2 percent increase in sales. The sales report suggested consumers kept spending despite a slumping housing market.
At the same time, US producer prices advanced by a larger-than-expected 1.1 percent in September on rebounding energy prices. But a key measure of core inflation at the producer level rose by a tamer-than-forecast 0.1 percent.
Analysts and some copper investors were cheered by the healthier-than-projected sales and inflation figures. Later, the economic data underpinned copper at the session lows. "This builds the case that there is not a lot of fallout from the crisis on consumer spending. We are really starting to build a case here, jobs are OK, consumer OK and if the consumer is going to be OK, the economy's going to be OK," said Jim Paulsen, chief investment officer, Wells Capital Management, in Minneapolis.
He added that the PPI numbers looked fairly benign, "As long as the big headline number doesn't feed into core, people aren't going to get too worried." "The retail numbers are where the action is at. With all the concerns about the consumer, and the fact a number of retailers suggested weaker sales this week, this is a big number," Paulsen said.
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