COMEX copper slipped on speculative selling Thursday morning on expected increases in supply, brokers said.
And the metal fell further when Phelps Dodge, the world's second largest copper producer, said it would restart 240 million lbs of copper production in 2004.
At 11:00 am EST (1600 GMT), benchmark March copper was down $1.15 at $1.1210 a lb., trading $1.1210 to $1.1325. The high formed a double-top formation on the charts with Wednesday's 6-1/2 year peak, analysts pointed out, which could signal a pullback.
In the first hour of trading, copper volume was estimated by COMEX at an unusually light 1,000 lots.
Despite the selling, the increases in US equity prices on Thursday buffered copper's decline.