Copper prices edged lower on Tuesday as cautious trading ahead of a key revision to U.S. payrolls numbers offset support from an incident at a major mine in Indonesia.

Three-month copper on the London Metal Exchange HG1! fell 0.1% to $9,905 per metric ton in official open-outcry trading.

“There is a lot of focus on the U.S. economy with revisions of the U.S. job growth through March expected today after last Friday’s data showed that job growth almost stalled in August,” said Dan Smith at Commodity Market Analytics.

The dollar was steady after hitting a seven-week low as investors braced for the revisions that could point to a jobs market in worse shape than initially thought, shoring up the case for even deeper Federal Reserve interest rate cuts.

In top metals consumer China, the yuan rose to a 10-month high against the U.S. currency, making dollar-priced metals more attractive for Chinese buyers.

“Demand for copper is still pretty strong because China is doing quite well as was shown by its Monday’s export-import data. It is the rest of the world that is causing a concern,” Smith said.

Freeport-McMoRan FCX said it had temporarily halted mining in Indonesia’s Grasberg, one of the world’s largest copper mines, after a large flow of wet material blocked access to parts of the underground mine, restricting evacuation routes for seven workers.

Miner Anglo American AAL and Canada’s Teck Resources TECK are to merge, the two companies said on Tuesday, in what would be the biggest mining sector M&A deal in over a decade. The two companies operate adjacent copper mines in Chile.

Meanwhile, LME aluminium ALI1! was steady at $2,616.5 a ton in official activity, ignoring daily LME data showing that available aluminium inventories (MALSTX-TOTAL) in the LME-registered warehouses fell to 375,025 tons, their two-month low, after 67,400 tons of fresh cancellations in Malaysia.

LME zinc ZNC1! fell 0.6% to $2,858.5, lead LEAD1! lost 0.3% to $1,986, tin FTIN1! slid 0.2% to $34,200, while nickel NICKEL1! dipped 0.2% to $15,155.
Source: Reuters