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Gold/Mining/Energy : Gold Price Monitor -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Alex who wrote (7973)	3/2/1998 9:10:00 PM
From: goldsnow	Read Replies (2) \| Respond to of 116764

FOCUS - Copper prices continue strong rally 05:43 p.m Mar 02, 1998 Eastern LONDON, Mar 2 (Reuters) - World copper prices on Monday continued last week's strong rally as investors rushed to reduce their sales commitments. But other commodities had a slow start to the week although gold's rally showed signs of stalling. Copper prices charged higher during Monday's London Metal Exchange (LME) trading with the benchmark three months delivery futures ending at the day's high of $1,749 a tonne, a one month high and up $43 from Friday. Traders said the strong advance in copper was a speculative, fund-based rally with the trade generally sidelined There was some fundamental justification for the rise, which may, however, prove to be temporary but the main upward impetus came when the price broke through a chart point at $1,710. Chartists said this signalled a turnround and, indeed, it immediately saw a wave of fund covering of sales made earlier in the year. Fundamentally, the market is waiting to see if there are sizeable shipments of copper from Hamburg to China as has been talked recently. Also, if prices rally to near $1,800 it is likely to see current tightly-held scrap released back into the market by secondary dealers. But brokers Mcquarie said in a weekly report that the market was still in oversupply aand that despite news last week of BHP Copper's production cutback of 68,000 tonnes a year, there is still too much capacity relative to likely demand. ''...further cuts will be needed to prevent the current rally in prices from being only temporary,'' the broker said. Macquarie said that so far over 170,000 tonnes a year of copper production cuts have been enacted. ''...we have lowered our projected market surplus for 1998 from just over 300,000 tonnes to 250,000 tonnes,'' it said. In the bullion market gold weakened through European trading as fresh rumours of new central bank sales filtered through the market on Monday, dealers said. Spot gold closed in London at $298.80/$299.30 an ounce against the previous New York close at $298.90/$299.40 an ounce. A London bullion dealer said gold had hit solid resistance at $300.00. ''The London session was very quiet and gold just drifted off. The only reason it got near $300.00 is because of stories of a buyback and that has been a rumour that has gone on since Friday,'' the dealer said. ''The $300.00 level obviously had a psychological significance... It had another go at it this morning in London after Asia took it higher. ''My guess is that you have a bit of disillusioned selling coming out of New York,'' T Hoare and Co analyst Rhona O'Connell said. One-month gold lease (lending) rates increased to 2.69 percent on Monday, prompting speculation on the possibility of new central bank selling. Tightening lease rates in gold caught the market's attention last week amid widespread market talk of a European central bank having failed to roll over a one million ounce lease position. O'Connell said previous increases in lease rates had taken place around the time of central bank sales of gold. ''If you saw increases in lease rates in 1996 and 1997...then you would think to yourself, this is either renewed speculative selling or central banks,'' O'Connell said. Some prices at 1750 GMT - Friday Thursday Ldn Spot Gold($ per ounce) 299.05 298.35 IPE Brent Crude Oil (May) 14.48 14.38 London Metal Exchange (3 mths delivery) Copper ($ per tonne) 1,749.00 1,711.00 Aluminium ($ per tonne) 1,473.00 1,458.00 LIFFE Coffee ($/tonne)(May) 1,704.00 1,680.00 Cocoa (Stg/tonne) (May) 1,062.00 1,056.00 White Sugar ($/tonne May) 274.40 271.30 Chicago Board of Trade Wheat May ($/bushel) 3.42 3.38 Copyright 1998 Reuters Limited. All rights reserved.