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Copper prices fall ahead of U.S. payroll benchmark revision

The copper price fell on Tuesday, as cautionary trading in anticipation of an important revision to U.S. employment numbers was offset by support from a major incident at a mine in Indonesia.

In open-outcry official trading, the price of three-month copper at the London Metal Exchange dropped by 0.1% to $9.905 per ton.

Commodity Market Analytics' Dan Smith said, "There has been a lot focus on the U.S. Economy with revisions to the U.S. Job Growth through March due today. Last Friday's data revealed that the job growth had almost stopped in August."

Investors braced themselves for revisions which could indicate that the jobs market is in worse shape than originally thought. This would strengthen the case for further Federal Reserve interest rate reductions.

The yuan has reached a 10-month-high against the U.S. dollar, which makes metals priced in dollars more appealing to Chinese buyers.

The demand for copper remains strong, as China's Monday export-import figures showed. Smith stated that the rest of world is a cause for concern.

Freeport-McMoRan has temporarily halted the mining of Grasberg in Indonesia, one of world's biggest copper mines. A large flow of wet materials blocked access to the underground mine and restricted the evacuation routes of seven workers.

The two companies announced on Tuesday that Anglo American, a Canadian miner, and Teck Resources, a Canadian company, would merge. This merger will be the largest mining M&A in the past decade. Both companies have adjacent copper mines located in Chile.

LME aluminium remained steady at $2.616.5 per ton, in official activity. This was despite daily LME data that showed available aluminum inventories. After 67,400 tonnes of new cancellations, the LME registered warehouses dropped to their lowest level in two months. <0#MALSTX-LOC>

LME zinc dropped 0.6% to 2,858.5. Lead fell 0.3% to 1,986, while tin dropped 0.2% at $34,200. Nickel also declined 0.2%, to $15,155. (Reporting and editing by Sonia Cheema, Shailesh Kumar, and Polina Devitt)

(source: Reuters)