In New York, the May COMEX contract fell 7.00 cents to settle at $3.65 per lb, just shy of its own three-month low at $3.6450 on Tuesday. Volumes raced to a new all-time peak above 118,700 lots in late New York trade, surpassing the prior record of 117,165 lots recorded on February 21, 2012, preliminary Thomson Reuters data showed.
"US job numbers on Friday were disappointing. China and the US combined account for more than half of global copper consumption, so it's uppermost in a lot of investors' minds that the two engines of growth might be slowing," said analyst Robin Bhar of Societe Generale.