Heavy Trading Metals

Copper is down a bit over 1.5%, and at this level would be closing at a new 52-week low. As we noted in our Chart of the Day yesterday, the decline in gold yesterday to new 52-week lows was relatively large. For copper, that’s not so true: this is only the 60th largest decline to a new 52-week low for the metal over the past 20 years. Still, copper has been hit hard, with relatively weak Chinese industrial production and fixed asset investment numbers reported overnight helping push futures to new lows as part of a longer stretch of dollar strength and EM weakness hurting prices. It’s hard to believe that prices were near multi-year highs less than three months ago.

Iron ore had rallied to a multi-month high to start the month of August, but it too is pulling back as metals continue to trade heavy.