London copper was set for a second straight quarterly gain on Thursday, even as prices dipped for the day on concerns over demand in top consumer China, which is grappling with its worst resurgence of COVID-19 cases since early 2020.
Three-month copper on the London Metal Exchange dropped 0.4 percent to $10,325 a ton, after a 0.5 percent rise in the previous session partly driven by a weak US dollar.
The most-traded May copper contract on the Shanghai Futures Exchange ended the morning trade 0.4 percent lower at 73,400 yuan ($11,561.24) a ton.
The metal often used as a gauge of global economic health has gained more than 6 percent on LME in the first quarter largely due to supply concerns.
China’s top smelters have raised by more than 14 percent their floor treatment and refining charges for copper concentrate in the second quarter, suggesting supply concerns have eased.
But Wenyu Yao, a senior commodity strategist at ING, would not rule out spikes in market volatility.
“The largest downside risks could be that a forceful policy required to curb inflation negatively spills over to financial sentiment and the real economy, and a prolonged COVID combat that could hurt demand harder (in China),” she wrote in a note. — Reuters
