In New York, the most-active September COMEX contract settled 1.33 percent lower at $3.493 per lb on Thursday, as the market corrected itself after a short-covering rally took the market to seven-week highs on Tuesday ahead the Independence Day holiday in the United States.
"Prices are lower because the dollar's so much stronger with the interest rate changes in Europe and China, but it's unbelievably slow today from our industrial customers," said a broker in New York. COMEX open interest fell by 10 percent to 136,296 on Monday from a week earlier, its lowest level since mid-January, according to Thomson Reuters data.