The most-traded February copper contract on the Shanghai Futures Exchange closed up 0.81 percent at 55,910 yuan ($9,000) a tonne on Wednesday. "One chink of light piercing the macro gloom for commodities is this week's encouraging Chinese activity, trade and financing data for October. We are moving to a small overweight in copper, which will benefit, should the trend continue," Barclays Capital said in a note.
Also this week, figures showed Chinese copper output rose nearly 9 percent to a record 520,000 tonnes in October.