Copper prices edged up on Friday, set for a third straight weekly gain, following U.S. President Donald Trump’s upbeat rhetoric on trade talks with China, although concerns about demand for the metal kept gains in check.
FUNDAMENTALS
* Three-month copper on the London Metal Exchange was up 0.1% at $5,894.50 a tonne by 0222 GMT.
* The most-traded January copper contract on the Shanghai Futures Exchange rose 0.3% to 47,300 yuan ($6,719.80) a tonne.
* The trade talks were “moving right along”, Trump said on Thursday, even as Chinese officials insisted that both sides must simultaneously cancel some existing tariffs on each other’s goods for them to reach a “phase one” trade deal.
* The UK’s Serious Fraud Office has launched a bribery investigation into Glencore, adding to legal troubles that have hit the shares of one of the world’s biggest miners and commodity traders.
* Negotiations over future Brazilian steel exports to the United States have been halted since Trump tweeted earlier this week that he would slap tariffs back on them, according to the head of Brazil’s steel mills body IABr.
* COLUMN: The nickel price bubble is slowly deflating but bears would be advised to tread carefully with a sharp fall in LME inventory threatening a repeat of the time-spread turbulence that rocked the London market in late September.
* Apple Inc said it has bought the first-ever commercial batch of carbon-free aluminium from a joint venture between two of the world’s biggest aluminium suppliers.
