Shanghai copper extended gains on Friday, with the market supported by supply disruption concerns following Freeport’s force majeure declaration, but gains were limited by weaker demand amid high prices.

The most-traded copper contract on Shanghai Futures Exchange closed daytime trade up 0.38% at 82,470 yuan ($11,558.68) per metric ton, ending the week with a 3.39% gain.

The benchmark three-month copper on the London Metal Exchange fell 0.35% to $10,223.5 a ton as of 0716 GMT, but is set to end the week up 2.33%.

A firmer dollar weighed on LME copper. The dollar held on to steep gains on Friday after better-than-forecast U.S. data dampened expectations for further easing by the Federal Reserve this year.

The high prices come amid restocking ahead of China’s National Day holiday from October 1 to October 8, which is expected to impact demand, with further gains in copper price depending on the downstream acceptance of high copper prices, analysts at Chinese broker Haitong Futures said.

Copper enterprises should firmly oppose “involution-style” competition, which hurts the interests of both the industry and the country, Chen said.

Among other LME metals, zinc tumbled 0.85%, lead (CNPB3) dropped 0.62%, nickel was down 0.45%, aluminium decreased 0.38% while tin eased 0.16%.

For SHFE base metals, nickel tumbled 1.05%, lead was unchanged, tin added 0.16%, zinc and aluminium and tin were little changed.
Source: Reuters