Copper falls as inventories rise; trading slows ahead of China holiday

Copper prices fell on Tuesday, under pressure from rising inventories and muted trading activity ahead of the Lunar New Year break in top metals consumer China that starts this weekend. The benchmark three-month copper on the London Metal Exchange was down 0.8% at $13,073.50 a metric ton by 0958 GMT. Demand has cooled after Chinese downstream buyers wrapped up pre–holiday restocking, Chinese brokerage GF Futures said in a note. China's fourth-quarter apparent copper consumption fell 12.3% year-on-year, with the full-year 2025 demand for the metal up 4%, analysts at Morgan Stanley said in a note. There will be little hard data about the recent consumption until March due to the nine-day Lunar New Year holiday, which starts on February 15, they added. Meanwhile, copper stocks in LME-registered warehouses are at 189,100 tons, their highest since May, after 4,800 tons were delivered into the warehouses in Taiwan and the U.S., daily LME data showed. Inventories in warehouses monitored by the Shanghai Futures Exchange rose to 248,911 tons of copper, their highest since March, at the end of last week, while Comex copper inventories , at a record high of 535,430, continue seeing daily inflows. Providing some support to copper, the Chinese yuan strengthened past 6.91 per dollar for the first time since May 2023 on Tuesday. The stronger yuan makes the dollar-priced metals more attractive for the Chinese buyers. The wider markets' focus this week is on the monthly reports covering U.S. employment and consumer prices that were pushed back slightly due to a recent three-day government shutdown. On the technical front, copper is supported by the 21-day moving average at $13,061. Among other LME metals, aluminium fell 1.1% to $3,091 a ton, zinc lost 0.3% to $3,362.50, lead dropped 0.4% to $1,960.50, tin dipped 0.6% to $48,360, while nickel shed 1.0% to $17,160. (Reporting by Polina Devitt; additional reporting by Lewis Jackson and Dylan Duan; Editing by Harikrishnan Nair)