LONDON: Copper rose from a two-week low on Wednesday due to signs of an easing in tensions in the US-China trade conflict but a lack of firm resolution kept a lid on the tepid gains.
Three-month copper on the London Metal Exchange (LME) inched up 0.2 percent to $6,119 per tonne by 1123 GMT, its first rise in five sessions.
"There is an element of optimism but the market is a bit more wait and see and seems a bit exhausted," ETF Securities analyst Nitesh Shah said.
"If there is something more concrete from the trade talks, and not just moving timelines around, an actual agreement with a plan, then we might have something more firm from prices."
TRADE TALKS: US Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin said he hopes for "productive" trade meetings in China this week. On Tuesday, US President Donald Trump said he could let the deadline for a trade agreement "slide for a little while".
If a trade deal cannot be reached by the deadline of March 1, US tariffs on $200 billion worth of Chinese imports are scheduled to increase to 25 percent from 10 percent.
STOCKS: On-warrant stocks of copper available to the market in LME-registered warehouses were at 74,750 tonnes, close to a 2005 low touched in October.
"Copper demand is sufficiently strong to support prices at these levels, slightly above $6,100, but it's not strong enough to push them further without any major broad-based metal-intensive stimulus in China," Julius Baer analyst Carsten Menke said.
FLOODS HIT ZINC: Floods in Australia's Queensland state are set to disrupt the rail delivery of zinc exports to the northern port of Townsville, with the line likely to be out of action for at least a month, analysts said on Wednesday.
Townsville port ships about 40 percent of Australia's zinc production, equal to about 700,000 tonnes a year or 5 percent of global supply.
ZINC SPREADS: LME zinc stocks are at their lowest since January 2008, although cash zinc was trading at a discount of $6.25 a tonne to the three-month price, versus a premium of $125 in early December, in a sign of weaker immediate demand.
OTHER METALS: Aluminium and zinc were steady at $1,860 and $2,607 per tonne. Lead was down 0.6 percent at $2,021.50, tin added 1.6 percent to $21,255 per tonne, while nickel fell 0.4 percent at $12,355.
Comments
Comments are closed for this article.