Investors on the London Metal Exchange prefer caution amid nervousness over a potential US-led military strike on Syria. A military strike, which could be delivered within a few days, would be a retaliatory aggression by the Western powers for two and a half years of civil war in the Middle East.
Tensions over Syria pushed Brent crude to a 6-month high, while gold fell to a 7-week low in Asian trading. Copper on the London Metal Exchange fell 0.6 percent in three months to settle at $ 7.272.25 a tonne, after peaking at $ 7,352.50 earlier in the session. The most traded copper contracts on the Shanghai Futures Exchange fell nearly 1 percent to lock in at CNY 52,360 a tonne, down from a four-month high of CNY 53,620 on Monday.
AME Group analyst Matthew Fusarelli in Sydney said that the picture of global copper demand has shown a deviation from the main trend by more than 10 percent over the past two months, but most consider this to be good news and prices have now stalled. He said that in China, manufacturers are not particularly pushing prices up. Copper, offered by Chinese supplier Shmet, hovered around $ 10 this week and hovered around $ 185 a tonne, but this is not far from the four-year high of $ 210 it peaked in late June.
