Asia stocks advanced after Wall Street ended volatile trade in positive territory, adding to the previous session's big gains, although lingering investor jitters helped support safe-haven currencies such as the yen.

COPPER: Three-month copper on the London Metal Exchange  had risen 0.4 percent to $6,007.5 a tonne by 0708 GMT, while the most-traded contract on the Shanghai Futures Exchange  closed down 0.1 percent at 48,340 yuan ($7,051.48) a tonne.

MARKETS: Copper is being supported by gains in crude oil and equity markets, although concerns over slowing growth in top metals consumer China are pressuring prices.

FIRMS: Earnings at China's industrial firms in November dropped for the first time in nearly three years, data showed on Thursday, in a sign of rising risks to the world's second-largest economy.

SMELTERS: China's top copper smelters on Thursday raised their floor treatment and refining charges (TC/RCs) for the first quarter of 2019 by 2.2 percent, sources with knowledge of the matter said.

The miners pay the TC/RCs to smelters to process their ore into refined metal, with higher minimum charges for processing indicating a well-supplied copper concentrate market.

INVESTMENT: Chilean miner Collahuasi, owned by Anglo American Plc and Glencore Plc, has applied for an environmental permit to extend the life of its deposit with an estimated $3.2 billion investment, the company said on Thursday.

The project at Collahuasi, one of the world's largest copper mines with an estimated 2018 production of 545,000 tonnes, will upgrade operations to improve efficiency and production, the statement said.