China concerns continue to weigh on copper

The price of copper fell on Friday after Thursday's rebound, on continued concerns over demand growth from China, the world's largest consumer of the red metal.

Copper was down 1.03% to US$2.567/lb on the London Metal Exchange from Thursday's US$2.594/lb, Chilean state copper commission Cochilco said.

Cochilco said the decline could be attributed to weakening demand from China, after the most recent forecast from the World Bank, which indicated an expected fall in copper demand from the Asian giant.

Standard Bank said in a note: "The fall in price has been rather precipitous yet comes amid decent fundamentals, tightness in the spreads and what looks to be a return to of big disruption allowances.

"While weaker crude oil prices and a stronger dollar have seemingly weighed on the metal, the longer-term correlations with those markets are still rather poor, with the capitulation in early January instead seemingly driven by significant long liquidation and technical selling."

A separate Standard Bank note said: "At the very worst, copper looks like being balanced in 2015 with our estimates suggesting that will be an apparent reined surplus of 102,000t, or around 0.4% of the size of the copper market."

Aluminum closed up 0.9% at US$1,798.50/t, with lead 0.3% lower at US$1,766.50/t and nickel down 1.4% at US$14,360/t. Zinc rose 0.9% to US$2,056.50/t, tin closed down 0.7% at US$19,325/t and molybdenum was flat at US$21,000/t.