US copper futures rumbled to a new record in thin dealings on Tuesday, propped up by sharp falls in the dollar, a strong Chinese currency and threats of supply disruptions, analysts said. The benchmark fourth-month copper contract on the COMEX division of the New York Mercantile Exchange, March, settled up 1.1 percent, or 4.8 cents, at $4.3280 per lb.
Despite its record price on COMEX, copper's traded volume on the exchange was just around 11,700 lots, or about a quarter of the 30-day average, by 2:30 pm EST (1930 GMT), Thomson Reuters' preliminary data showed. Technically, COMEX copper was expected to briefly enter a range of $4.40 to $4.50 per lb over the next four weeks and then retrace to $4.045 cents, according to Reuters technical analyst Wang Tao.