Copper at $3.09 as U.S. and China Housing Demand Slowing

Copper futures capped the biggest decline in more than a week on demand concerns amid signs that housing markets are sputtering in China and the U.S., the two biggest users.

New-home prices dropped in 68 of the state-tracked 70 cities in August from July, China’s statistics bureau said today. That was the most since January 2011, when the government changed the way it compiles the data. Real estate accounts for 50 percent of the nation’s copper use, Goldman Sachs Group Inc. estimates. Beginning home construction in the U.S. fell 14 percent, adding to indications of an uneven housing recovery.

Prices of copper fell because of “a confluence of factors between poor figures from the U.S. and China,” Graham Leighton, a trader at Marex Spectron Group in New York, said by phone.

Bloomberg

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