Copper stays steady

Red metals registers strong weekly losses

Copper prices rose marginally at Comex on Friday, 11 March 2011. Prices traded in narrow range as powerful earthquake coupled with Tsunami hit Japan thereby fuelling demand concerns.

Copper for May delivery added 1cent or 0.2% to $4.21 a pound at Comex on Friday. For the week, copper lost 5.8%.

Three-month-delivery copper on the London Metal Exchange added $87 (0.9%) to end at $9,160 a metric ton.

For the month of February 2011, copper prices gained 1.3%. Before this, in January, copper prices finished flat.

Japan is a top consumer of commodities just following China.

Among domestic economic data expected for the day on Friday, the preliminary Consumer Sentiment Survey for March from the University of Michigan came in at 68.2, which marked its worst reading in five months and was well short of expectation.

Advance retail sales for February showed a 1% increase, in line with expectations. Excluding autos, retail sales increased by 0.7%, which is narrowly better than the 0.6% increase that had been expected. Retail sales for January were revised upward to reflect a 0.7% increase.

January business inventories showed a 0.9% increase, which is slightly stronger than the 0.8% increase that had been broadly expected.

Among other traded metals at LME, lead in London rose 0.6% to $2,430 a ton and nickel rose 1.7% to $26,100 a ton. Aluminum rose 0.6% to end at $2,534 a ton, and zinc rose 0.2% to end at $2,280 a ton.