Copper falls from two week high; demand worries weigh

Three-month copper on LME shed 0.8% to a session low of $7,563 a tonne

Copper dipped on Wednesday, giving up some gains from the previous session when it hit two-week highs, as some traders locked in profits and other investors remain concerned about sluggish demand amid weak Chinese copper imports. "The macro mood at the moment is 'glass half empty' - the overall economic outlook remains very much a mixed picture," said analyst Duncan Hobbs at Macquarie in London.

Three-month copper on the London Metal Exchange shed 0.8 percent to a session low of $7,563 a tonne, after rising 2.4 per cent in the previous session on short-covering, traders said. LME copper failed to trade in official midday open-outcry activity, but was bid at $7,575.

Copper hit its highest in almost two weeks on Tuesday at $7,645.25 a tonne, extending a rebound from an 8-month low near $7,330 last week. Prices are still down more than four per cent on the year.

Weighing on the market was downbeat sentiment so far at the CESCO/CRU World Copper Conference in Santiago, the world's biggest gathering dedicated to the red metal. "My sense of feedback from colleagues who are there is that the mood on the market is certainly on the soft side... even the Chilean strike action does not appear to be worrying people in the same way it might have done a year or two ago. "

Workers staged a 24-hour strike at world No. 1 copper producer Codelco on Tuesday.

Copper declined even after China's overall trade data was taken as a sign that domestic demand may be picking up and reinforced views of a gradual recovery under way in the world's second-largest economy. But China's March copper arrivals fell by a sharp 30 percent from a year ago, indicating the pickup in demand was not as strong as expected.

"Taking the last three months as a whole, we estimate that the 6.3 per cent year-on-year drop in the volume of commodity imports is the largest decline since the first quarter of 2005," Ross Strachan, commodities economist with Capital Economics in London, said in a note. "Overall, our view is that China's commodity imports are set to remain weak."

The most-traded August copper contract on the Shanghai Futures Exchange hit a nearly two-week peak, before trimming gains to close at 55,140 yuan ($8,900) a tonne.