Nickel plunged from the pre-dawn hours straight through the morning, only coming off its lows late to close at $9.939/lb., down more than 32 cents. Zinc was up and down all day with a slight upside bias, ending at $0.8818/lb., up three-quarters of a cent. Aluminum also pushed higher, adding a penny and two-thirds, to $1.3166/lb., up a penny and a quarter, while lead inched higher, adding a bit less than a penny, to $0.8769/lb.

It was a surprisingly good day for the industrial metals, modestly up though it may have been, considering that the economic numbers point definitively to recession and the decrease in demand that that will bring with it.

However, the upside for the metals is that the plunging dollar makes them cheaper for holders of other currencies, and that provoked a bit of buying in the markets.

On the supply side, copper inventories monitored by the LME were depleted for a change, dropping by 950 metric tons, to 122,550 tons, on Friday That came after they had risen by about 10% since the start of May.

Copper inventories monitored by the Shanghai Futures Exchange were also down, falling 13% to 38,829 metric tons in the week ended Thursday.

From a technical viewpoint, chartists say that copper holding at the key support level of $3.50 is a good sign, and they expect a test of the next level of resistance, $3.75.

And in the latest of a spate of labor problems, BHP Billiton reported that operations at its smallest copper mine in Chile, Cerro Colorado, had been hit by a truckers’ strike. Its larger mines have been unaffected as yet, Billiton said.

Source: Base Metals Mostly Higher