Shanghai copper futures gave up early gains on Thursday, sitting not far off multi-year lows on concerns about China's economic slowdown and high inventory in the world's top consumer of the industrial metal. China's economy slowed markedly in the first two months of the year, with growth in investment, retail sales and factory output all falling to multi-year lows, a surprisingly weak performance that raises the spectre of a sharper cool down.
"Fundamentally the situation in China is not looking bright. Defaults are surfacing, inventory has been rising very quickly, credit tightening is likely to continue," said Joyce Liu, investment analyst at Phillip Futures in Singapore. The most-traded June copper contract on the Shanghai Futures Exchange ended 0.54 percent lower at 44,410 yuan a tonne, having fallen to 43,740 yuan a tonne on Wednesday, its lowest since July 2009. Copper inventories in warehouses monitored by the Shanghai Futures Exchange rose 4.6 percent last week to 207,320 tonnes, while stocks in bonded warehouses were estimated by industry sources at up to 800,000 tonnes.