London copper futures rallied above $8,000 a tonne to their highest since August 2008 on Tuesday after a four-day weekend. Three-month copper on the London Metal Exchange rose around 1.5 percent on Tuesday to touch $8,009.75, its highest since August 2008 and is creeping towards that year's record high of less than $1,000 above the current market.
Benchmark third-month Shanghai copper rose 0.5 percent to 63,110 yuan. Nickel rose 0.6 percent to $25,187. Nickel is the strongest performer of the LME metals, up by a third this year, versus copper's rise of 8 percent. But Zhu warned that prices may have run too far ahead. LME stocks of nickel stand at 157,512 tonnes, just off a recent record high, but still equivalent to more than 10 percent of global output.