Copper closed down on Wednesday as a firmer dollar and macro-economic concerns continued to cloud near-term demand prospects and limit the bullish impact of a prolonged strike at the world's largest copper mine. In New York, the key September COMEX contract shed 3.15 cents to settle at $4.4465 per lb.
As a result, trading volumes thinned out to a little more than 30,300 lots traded late in New York, down more than a third from the 30-day norm, according to Thomson Reuters preliminary data.