US copper prices rose to an all-time high on Monday, quickly resuming this year's 28 percent rally after a brief dip following China's Christmas Day increase in interest rates. Most analyst say Beijing's quarter-point rate increase is unlikely to deter demand from the world's top copper buyer for long, and the fact that it had been long anticipated has blunted the impact on prices.
A UK holiday and extremely thin trading conditions in the United States also limited reaction. The market also gained support from an ongoing port outage in Chile, which is hindering shipments of copper from the world's No 3 mine for a second week. And Shanghai copper inventories fell last week, although LME stocks have risen for two weeks amid their biggest sustained rise since February.
On the New York COMEX market, where all open outcry trading was delayed until 11 am EST (1600 GMT) due to a massive snowstorm, the most-active March futures contract settled up 2.15 cents at $4.2800 per lb, having earlier touched a record $4.2985, a hair above last week's peak. Trade of just over 10,000 lots was about one-quarter the average and the lightest since December 28 last year.
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