Morning Copper Market Report

In the overnight action September copper mostly waffled around within the Monday US trading range. Asian copper prices were a touch weaker overnight but US equities have managed some minor gains today and copper is possibly benefiting from the initial currency market trade. While copper has clearly tracked like a physical commodity market as of late, it is not clear if today's US scheduled data will be definitively weak enough to spark a rally off a fresh increase in US easing prospects. There was some talk of Chinese restocking for the second half of 2012 overnight and that has probably served to provide a thin layer of support under copper prices. However, copper was also held back slightly by analyst suggestions overnight of an ongoing physical commodity market slump, especially if the Euro zone situation remains unresolved through the coming EU summit. However, with the positive US new home sales figures yesterday, at least a portion of the broad based deflationary based selling threat might have been tempered but the news yesterday might also increase the importance of the Case-Shiller home price release later this morning. It is also possible that copper prices will see some pressure from the US Consumer Confidence report later this morning, as early expectations for that report call to produce a slight decline. LME copper stocks overnight were up only 50 tons to stand at 253,250 tons.