SINGAPORE: London copper prices were steady on Monday, up 0.25 percent, with investors leery of placing big bets after a weekend of airstrikes by Western powers against Libya, tightening monetary policy in China and the aftermath of Japan's earthquake.
Three-month copper on the London Metal Exchange rose $24 to $9,534 a tonne by 0330 GMT, after ending last week up 3.5 percent, its biggest such gain since early February.
Shanghai's most active copper futures contract fell 0.2 percent to 71,670 yuan a tonne.
"My first reaction is how resilient the market has been to one of biggest natural disasters in a developed economy and to the bombings in North Africa," said Joel Crane, analyst at Morgan Stanley in Melbourne.
"It's a pretty good indicator of where markets are headed. Copper is in an established range between $9,000 and $10,000 and even though the global market is uncertain, there is a bottom in place."
Public attention is focused on the drama in Japan following the earthquake, tsunami and unfolding nuclear crisis and on UN-sanctioned airstrikes on Libya, which are also driving oil, but traders in other commodities are more concerned about inflation.
Oil rose around 2 percent on Monday after Western forces bombed Libya's air defences, while the spread of Arab unrest to Syria, where thousands demonstrated against the government on Sunday, violence in Bahrain and Yemen and small protests in the world's biggest oil exporter, Saudi Arabia, add to the inflation risks posed by energy costs.
In China, Vice Premier Li Keqiang said the nation would stay focused on stifling inflation even as global economic uncertainties multiplied. That came after Friday's move by the world's top commodity consumer to raise bank reserve ratio rules once more as part of Beijing's effort to tame price rises.
"The comments from the World Bank underscore the inflation problem is an Asian problem. But with their higher levels of growth, it's a problem Asian economies can deal with without wrecking demand," said a trader in Hong Kong.
"China still has a lot to do cooling prices, but they have taken a slow and steady approach and the market reacts less and less each time they ratchet up policy."
In a semi-annual report on east Asia, the World Bank nudged up its 2011 growth forecasts to 8.2 percent from 7.8 percent, but said the fight against inflation would weigh on economies from China to Malaysia after their sharp rebound from the global financial crisis.
It added that Japan would suffer short-term economic damage from its devastating earthquake this month, and the impact on the broader
Other metals were also steady, with the exception of nickel , which lost 1 percent to $26,470.
Somali pirates seized a ship carrying 8,300 tonnes of ferro-nickel to Europe last week and owned by shipping firm PT Samudera Indonesia .
But traders said there would be limited price impact other than perhaps a minor rise in European nickel premiums, currently at $200/400 a tonne
"There is plenty of nickel in warehouses, so the loss of this cargo won't mean much for prices. But it does highlight the risks. It could cause a bit of an uptick in premiums if buyers look to local warehouses to meet supply," the Hong Kong trader said.
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