Copper slips to multi-month lows as economic slowdown hurts demand

COPPER WALLOWED IN NEGATIVE TERRI TORY DESPITE SEEING LITTLE GAINS AT THE CLOSING SESSION of the week, following a more than seven-month low the previous day, as worries over a global economic slowdown dampened demand, leaving the red metal stuck in its sixth consecutive weekly decline.

Benchmarkthree-monthcopperon theLondonMetalExchange(LME)was flat at $9,095 a tonne, after falling below $9,000at$8,938,itslowestsinceOctober 2021. The contract also declined 3.4 percent in the week, while analysts at global financial services corporation, Citi, projected that copper prices are likely to decline to $8,500 a tonne within the next three months.

Also, the most-active June copper contract on the Shanghai Futures Exchange (ShFE) was down 0.5 percent at 71,060 yuan or $10,445.39 a tonne. So far, copper, which is used in power and construction sectors and widely seen as a barometer of global economic growth, has declined over 16 percent from March’s record high of $10,845, when investors traded cautiously over fears that the war in Ukraine would disrupt its supply from Russia.

Other industrial metals also dipped in valuation as traders worried that a slowing global economy would require less metal, thereby dwindling demand.