JOHANNESBURG/LONDON – Copper rebounded as speculators surprised the market with a bout of buying late in the session despite a rise in new coronavirus cases in China.
Copper was in the red or barely steady for most of the day until the release of negative US purchasing manager data, which in turn hit the dollar index
A weaker dollar makes commodities priced in the US currency cheaper for buyers using other currencies.
“It’s a bit of a strange one, because if the economy’s particularly weak, we typically see the base metals react (negatively) to it,” said Robert Montefusco at broker Sucden Financial.
“We did see some support at those lower (prices), then we saw a bout of spec buying, and it hit some stops on the upside. Maybe it’s the failure to continue to the downside, so they thought they’d push it to the upside.”
Three-month copper on the London Metal Exchange CMCU3 (LME) rose 0.7 percent to $5,765 a ton in final open-outcry trading after falling as low as $5,684.
Fears over the spread of the virus dragged copper to its lowest in nearly two years this month and sent the metal on its longest losing streak since at least 1977. — Reuters
