Volumes traded in the red metal were moderate over Asian trading hours, with just over 2,100 lots exchanged as at 9am London time.
Price action in the red metal continues to trade either side of the $5,800-per-tonne threshold, trading in a daily high-low range of just over $20 per tonne.
This comes after another fresh cancelation this morning totaled some 21,175 tonnes - all of which was booked out of LME-registered warehouses in Asia.
Yet despite more than 65,000 tonnes of material now off-warrant, the LME copper price has remained rangebound.
Similarly, forward spreads in LME copper have held in contango, supporting both carry and finance costs, with the red metal’s benchmark cash/three-month spread recently trading in a $30-per-tonne contango.
“[Wednesday’s] metals prices very much reflected the current round of bad economic numbers and the lack of interest physical buyers have in paying current prices,” Kingdom Futures director and chief executive Malcolm Freeman said in a morning report.
“Equally the market seems to have become used to large warrant cancellations and accept that this metal will simply turn up somewhere else,” he added.
Elsewhere in the complex, the three-month tin price fell the furthest of its peers over the morning, trading at around $16,485 per tonne.
Tin futures reached a high of $17,750 per tonne on September 11, but have since fallen by more than 10%.
Supporting lower prices, LME stocks remain in abundance, with some 6,160 tonnes on-warrant. Traders have also reported that a variety of material remains in the LME systems, with purity upwards of the LME’s 99.85% standard.
Other highlights
- The dollar index increased over the morning, climbing by 0.05% to 99.03.
- In other commodities, Brent crude oil futures were down by 0.02%, falling to $62.54 per barrel.
- In US data on Wednesday, crude oil inventories rose by 2.4 million barrels in the week ended September 20, compared with 300,000-barrel decline that had been forecast.
- In data on Thursday, the United States’ final gross domestic product reading and unemployment claims are of note.
