Copper rose early on Friday on a retreating dollar and firm US economic data, but anxiety over the eurozone's sovereign debt woes threatens to curb the red metal's gains going into next week. "Copper is rallying with other commodities, primarily due to macro prospects," said Peter Buchanan, commodities analyst and senior economist at CIBC. "It's not a good picture overall, but it's perhaps not as bad as it could be."
In New York, the key March COMEX contract jumped to trade $3.3190 per lb., a gain of 5.15 cents or 1.58 percent, and is on track to post its first percentage increase of the week. Opportunity buying following copper's hammering on Wednesday, when it dropped 5 percent, also boosted the metal on Friday. Surprising resilience in the US economy and corporate sector underpinned investor appetite for risky assets into the year-end, although trading is thinning out ahead of a holiday season.