Preoccupations about the strength of the globe's second-largest economy dragged down copper futures on Friday, Bloomberg reports.
The reddish metal was driving toward a fourth consecutive week of losses as concerns spread about the economy of China, the world's top consumer of the base metal. The industrial metal, which is sensitive to economic developments due to its widespread use in industry, is driving toward losses of 0.5 percent this week.
"There should be a bit of profit-taking after the gains in the last couple of days because there's simply no sign that demand will rise strongly enough to absorb the huge inventories," analyst Fang Junfeng with Shanghai CIFCO Futures Co. told the news source. "We are not bullish on copper."
At 2:49 p.m. on Friday, copper futures fell 2.14 percent, a 0.076-cent loss to $3.476 per pound.
Reuters reports the base metal was damaged by a U.S. dollar that benefited from a strong jobs report released by the U.S. Department of Labor. Though the jobless rate increased to 7.9 percent after registering at 7.8 percent, more jobs were created in the U.S. last month than the previous month.
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