Copper kicked off the first trading day of 2012 with a more than 2-percent rally on Tuesday, driven by prospects of healthier demand from upbeat data from the world's top two raw materials consumers. With some assistance from a weaker dollar, buyers reemerged into the base metals complex at the start of the new year, lifting copper, tin, lead aluminium and zinc all to their priciest levels in roughly three weeks.
"I think 2012, at least this first quarter, is going to be very similar to 2011 where we have a day where everything is up 2 to 3 percent and the next day it's down 2 to 3 percent," said Sean McGillivray, vice president and head of asset allocation for Great Pacific Wealth Management in Oregon.
In New York, the key March COMEX contract surged 9.25 cents, or 2.7 percent, to settle at $3.5285 per lb, near the upper end of its $3.4540 to $3.5390 session range. At a little more than 33,000 lots in late afternoon business in New York, futures volumes were down by nearly a third from their 30-day norm, according to preliminary Thomson Reuters data.