LONDON: Copper prices pulled back on Monday as inventories extended their rise and investors puzzled over the future of US tariffs and Chinese trading ahead of reopening after a holiday.
Benchmark three-month copper on the London Metal Exchange was down 0.3percent at USD12,930 a metric ton by 1455 GMT after hitting a more than one-week high of USD13,050 earlier in the session.
LME copper has rebounded nearly 4percent over the past four sessions, but is still well below a record peak of USD14,527.50 hit on January 29. “The fact that there are more visible inventories outside of the US is a bit of a dampener, that may indicate a bit of softness in demand,” said Nitesh Shah, commodity strategist at WisdomTree. “But it’s always hard knowing whether it’s inventory that’s going from off-exchange (warehouses) to exchange or simply just a weakening of overall demand.” Copper stocks in LME-approved warehouses rose 6,675 tons to 241,825 tons, data showed on Monday, the highest since March 2025, having surged 70percent so far this year.
Metals, along with the dollar and equity markets, were hit by uncertainty after the US Supreme Court struck down President Donald Trump’s emergency tariffs on Friday, leading him to quickly announce a new temporary tariff of 15percent on US imports from all countries. Traders were also waiting for the Shanghai Futures Exchange, which has been closed for the Lunar New Year holiday, to reopen on Tuesday. “A big thing is what the Chinese are going to do when they come back in, whether there’s going to be some extra domestic demand, because that’s been lacking. We’ll have to wait and see on that one,” said Robert Montefusco at Sucden Financial.
LME nickel climbed 0.7percent to USD17,465 a ton after an official of top producer Indonesia said it was considering revoking the environmental permit of a company after a landslide hit a mine waste zone at its nickel processing hub.
In other metals, LME aluminium rose 0.3percent to USD3,112 a ton, lead added 0.1percent to USD1,967, tin jumped 3percent to USD47,975, while zinc fell 0.4percent to USD3,370.50.
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