SHANGHAI: London copper traded slightly above $8,000 a tonne on Friday, hovering near its previous close, as investors waited for more decisive cues on demand such as whether China loosens monetary policy and the health of the euro zone.
Thursday's successful French and Spanish bond auctions eased some fears over the euro zone debt crisis, but the positive news was later offset by soft jobs data out of the United States.
Three-month copper on the London Metal Exchange rose 0.3 percent to $8,070 a tonne by 0356 GMT, after closing flat on Thursday, but is on track to record a 1 percent weekly rise.
The most-active July copper contract on the Shanghai Futures Exchange lifted 0.3 percent to 57,860 yuan ($9,200) a tonne, after falling 0.3 percent in the previous session. It is on track to post a 0.9 percent fall on the week.
France and Spain sold all the bonds they wanted at auction on Thursday, although for Spain the cost was rising yields, indicating growing concerns the government will not be able to tame its deficit.
The number of Americans claiming unemployment benefits for the first time fell only slightly last week, suggesting that job growth in April will not improve much after March's disappointing performance.
With the major news of the day squaring off one another, copper investors played it safe, while keeping their fingers crossed for big economic announcements that may affect demand.
"Traders are mainly waiting on the sidelines to see if Beijing will loosen monetary policy soon. Copper demand has picked up slightly as some consumers, attracted by the fall in prices to around the $8,000 level, did some limited restocking. But overall demand is soft and unable to push prices much higher," said a Shanghai-based trader.
"Over the short term, downside room will most likely be determined by the euro zone crisis which continues to ferment and hurt sentiment. Any news affecting demand in the major economies will be more noteworthy for us than the slight fall in global supply that we have seen so far," he added.
Glencore recently announced the temporary shutdown of its PASAR copper smelter and refinery in the Philippines, which has an annual cathode production capacity of 215,000 tonnes.
But the loss in supply was more than offset by reports of high Shanghai bonded warehouses stocks, which Goldman Sachs estimated at 620,000 tonnes in its recent note.
On a positive note, International Monetary Fund chief Christine Lagarde said on Thursday she expects to win a big boost in funding to help the lender safeguard countries from the euro zone debt crisis now that Europe had taken significant steps on its own.
Meanwhile, Germany's leading economic institutes revised their 2012 growth forecasts slightly higher on Thursday, but warned that the debt crisis still haunting the euro zone remained the biggest threat to growth in Europe's largest economy.
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