LONDON— Prices of copper and other industrial metals fell on Friday, weighed down by a stronger dollar as investors sold risky assets after Israel attacked Iran.
Benchmark three-month copper on the London Metal Exchange shed 0.5 percent to $9,653 a metric ton after touching $9,532, the weakest since June 3.
The dollar index climbed and world stock markets tumbled after Israel launched a large-scale military strike on Iran.
A firmer dollar makes commodities priced in the US currency more expensive for buyers using other currencies.
“The market is de-risking on copper and aluminum,” said Alastair Munro, senior base metals strategist at broker Marex.
“Current events remove the likelihood of our running away to the topside. The declines, of course, are set to please those looking for dips to buy.”
LME copper had rebounded by about a fifth from April 7, when it touched the weakest since November 2023, until earlier this week.
US Comex copper futures dropped 0.3 percent to $4.82 a pound, bringing the premium of Comex over LME copper to $976 a ton.
Munro said much of the selling was by Commodity Trade Advisor (CTA) investment funds, which are largely driven by computer programs, while Chinese participants emerged at the lows to do some buying.
In China, the most-traded aluminum contract on the Shanghai Futures Exchange (SHFE) gained for the third straight day, up 0.4 percent at 20,425 yuan per metric ton, outperforming other SHFE metals.
“Aluminum, compared with the other metals, has been performing rather strongly recently as demand from the domestic market has been robust, while SHFE stocks have been declining,” a Hangzhou-based analyst from a futures company said.
