BLBG: Copper Falls, Near 5-Year Low as China’s Industrial Profits Slow
Copper fell, approaching a five-year low, as data showed China’s industrial profits grew at the slowest pace on record.
Earnings in 2014 grew at 3.3 percent, the weakest in records going back to 2000, according to the National Bureau of Statistics in Beijing. The figure contracted for a third month in December, falling 8 percent. China accounts for around 40 percent of global copper demand.
“The copper supply and demand equation is completely out of whack,” Naeem Aslam, the chief market analyst at Dublin-based Avatrade Ltd., said in an e-mail. “When it comes to demand, the Chinese data keeps on printing dramatically bad readings. As long as we do not see the demand picking up, I am afraid the upside is very limited for the metal.”
Copper futures for March delivery on the Comex fell 1.1 percent to $2.515 a pound by 10:05 a.m. in London. The metal for delivery in three months on the LME slipped 0.3 percent to $5,565 a metric ton.
Copper is piling up in London Metal Exchange warehouses, highlighting an oversupply that’s deepening an almost two-year bear market. Inventories monitored by the bourse have risen for the past 11 days, reaching 238,225 tons, the highest level since April.
To contact the reporters on this story: Laura Clarke in London at lclarke24@bloomberg.net; Alex Davis in Hong Kong at adavis150@bloomberg.net
To contact the editors responsible for this story: Lynn Thomasson at lthomasson@bloomberg.net John Deane
