Copper prices rose for a second straight day on Monday as the euro edged higher against the dollar and after encouraging comments from top consumer China boosted expectations of a recovery in demand, even as doubts lingered about the health of the debt-ridden euro zone.
Sentiment also received a boost after inspectors from the International Monetary Fund, the European Commission and the ECB - known as the troika - concluded a visit to Greece and said it has made progress on its debt bailout program. "There's a lot of shuffling and shifting, but there's not a lot of good, solid, quantifiable activity to really remedy the situation there," said Sterling Smith, commodity strategist at Citibank's Institutional Client Group in Chicago.7
The COMEX September contract settled 0.64 percent higher at $3.389 per lb, close to its intraday high of $3.3925, building on the prior session's near two-percent rally and feeding off of a stronger euro and healthier gains in global equity markets.