Copper fell in London after economic growth slowed in China, the world’s biggest consumer of the metal. Nickel slumped the most in four months.
Gross domestic product expanded 7.7 percent from a year earlier in 2013’s final quarter, China’s statistics bureau said today, against 7.8 percent in the previous period. Industrial output weakened last month from November, separate data showed. China’s economic growth will decelerate to 7.4 percent this year, according to a Bloomberg survey last month.
“Data show that China’s growth momentum is weakening,” RBC Capital Markets Ltd. said in a report. “Gains in the country’s benchmark money-market rate ahead of the Lunar New Year holidays also weighed on sentiment.”
Copper for delivery in three months dropped 0.4 percent to $7,313 a metric ton by 1:26 p.m. on the London Metal Exchange. Copper for delivery in March fell 0.2 percent to $3.339 a pound on the Comex in New York.
China’s seven-day repurchase rate, a gauge of interbank funding availability, jumped the most in seven months as demand for cash spiked before national holidays starting Jan. 31.
Copper stockpiles monitored by the LME, at the lowest in a year, fell 0.4 percent to 334,550 tons, daily data showed. Orders to take the metal from warehouses dropped 0.7 percent to 190,900 tons, the lowest since May 9.
Hedge-fund managers and other large speculators cut their net-long position in Comex copper to 25,664 futures and options contracts in the week ended Jan. 14, according to U.S. government data. That “still represents a high level, historically speaking,” Daniel Briesemannn, an analyst at Commerzbank AG in Frankfurt, said by e-mail.
Nickel for delivery in three months on the LME dropped 1.3 percent to $14,500 a ton after slumping as much as 2.6 percent, the most since Sept. 20. Prices gained 6 percent last week, the most since Feb. 1, as Indonesia, the world’s biggest producer of mined nickel, banned exports of unprocessed ores.
“The increase in the nickel price in the wake of the ore-export ban in Indonesia was excessive,” Briesemann said.
Aluminum and tin declined in London. Zinc and lead rose.
Source: Bloomberg
