By Francesca Freeman LONDON--Copper prices were little changed on the London Metal Exchange Tuesday, treading water ahead of a tranche of key economic news and data later in the week. The LME's flagship three-month copper contract was down 0.1% at $7,319 a metric ton in morning European trade. "The end of the week is packed out with some pretty significant events, including two major central bank meetings, the release of the December Federal Open Market Committee minutes and the U.S. jobs report," said Craig Erlam, a market analyst at Alpari UK. Since base metals are used widely in construction and manufacturing, investors tend to view such releases for economic growth signals. From a technical standpoint, copper prices look likely to remain rangebound for now, said Commerzbank technical analyst Karen Jones. The red metal is facing strong technical resistance at $7,398 a ton and $7,469 a ton, said Ms. Jones. "We continue to hold a bearish bias while capped here," she said. "We suspect that the market lacks the impetus to break higher and is just sidelined for now." In other base metals Tuesday, aluminum was down 0.4% at $1,775 a ton, zinc was up 0.2% at $2,038.75 a ton, nickel was down 0.1% at $13,545 a ton, lead was up 0.6% at $2,176 a ton and tin was down 0.6% at $21,600 a ton.

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