Copper ended higher on Tuesday, recovering some lost ground from two days of selling, as a positive turnaround in US equities helped investors mitigate some risk from the ongoing debt crisis in Europe. In New York, the benchmark September COMEX contract closed up 2.35 cents at $4.3915 per lb, near the upper end of its $4.3145 to $4.4050 session range.
Still, trading volumes were on the light side as traders sided with caution ahead of key growth and industrial output data from China on Wednesday. A little more than 37,000 lots traded in New York, about a quarter below the 30-day norm, according to preliminary data from Thomson Reuters. Copper had risen around 8 percent in the two weeks to the end of last week.