Copper prices drop to two-month low of $3.16
By Tom Stundza -- Purchasing, 11/12/2007 5:09:00 PM
World copper prices have continued to slide with morning trades today at $3.16/lb on the London metal Exchange (LME), as compared with $3.47 at the start of the month and an October average of $3.63. Copper’s price now has dropped 18% since early October on signs of slowing demand in the U.S. and Europe.
Bloomberg News says that the copper price drop this morning to a two-month low in London comes amid a slowdown in imports from China, the biggest buyer of copper. China's imports of copper and copper products came to 204,424 tons in October, the Beijing-based customs office said today. That's 5.6% lower than the amount reported for September.
In a morning commentary e-mailed to journalists, William Adams at BaseMetals.com in London, writes that “it is too early to tell whether the fresh [decline in copper prices] will be enough to prompt bargain hunting” by speculators and thus boost prices ahead, “or whether weakness in copper will pull the rug from the investment community’s support of the other nonferrous metals.”
However, inventories are rising across the LME to almost 173,000 metric tons as of Friday (from 167,000 at the start of the month), which is being interpreted as indicative of falling demand.
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