Copper fell on Friday after poor US jobs data for August fuelled concerns about the health of the world's top economy while the threat of kinks in a constrained supply pipeline provided a floor for prices. In New York, the key December COMEX copper contract fell 3.60 cents or 0.87 percent to conclude at $4.1245 a lb. "The report is clearly bad news for industrial commodities," said Bill O'Neill, the main partner of Logic Advisors in New Jersey, said.
"People were expecting a bad number - but maybe not quite so bad a figure - so you had this knee-jerk sell-off," analyst Leon Westgate at Standard Bank said. "It continues to paint a pretty ugly picture in terms of some of the US economic health, and follows on from poor European data yesterday. It's not a fantastic backdrop for base metals," he added. O'Neill said the only saving grace for copper would be demand for the red metal from leading consumer China. "We still see a fairly decent pattern of demand out of Asia," he said.