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Copper fell for a third straight session on Friday and was headed for its steepest weekly decline in 10 months, as rising inventories and a stronger U.S. dollar pressured prices.
Benchmark three-month copper on the London Metal Exchange edged down 0.3% to $12,860.50 per metric ton as of 1020 GMT, having slumped as much as 2.9% earlier in the session.
The red metal is on course for a weekly dip of 2.2%, which would be its sharpest weekly decline since the week ended April 4, 2025, and is already down 11.5% from a record high of $14,527.50 on January 29.
"The focus has swung back from speculative narrative to soft physical indicators, with inventories across London, Shanghai, and New York warehouses all increasing of late," Neil Welsh, head of metals at Britannia Global Markets, wrote in a note.
LME copper stocks rose to 183,275 tons, the highest since May 2025, following further deliveries into South Korea and New Orleans, while inventories on the Shanghai Futures Exchange climbed for the ninth week in a row to 248,911 tons in a seasonal build-up ahead of Lunar New Year.
On the U.S. Comex exchange, copper stocks are at a record 531,999 tons.
Copper has joined gold and silver in a broader correction, as an unwinding of long positions has "pulled prices closer to fair value," analysts at Sucden Financial said.
That is likely to keep prices choppy, "particularly as liquidity thins into the Lunar New Year," they added in a quarterly metals report.
ING analyst Ewa Manthey said the market would refocus on tight ore supply, growing demand from electrification and ongoing grid investment after the holiday, which sees top metals consumer China shut for a week. "In our view, those drivers haven't changed," she said.
Elsewhere, aluminium nudged up 0.5% to $3,040 a ton, zinc was flat at $3,302, nickel fell 0.6% to $16,965, tin dropped 0.9% to $46,000 and lead lost 0.3% to $1,949.
(Reporting by Tom Daly; additional reporting by Lewis Jackson and Dylan Duan; Editing by Eileen Soreng, Ronojoy Mazumdar and Diti Pujara)
