copper jumps to seven week high in n y leads

Copper Jumps to Seven-Week High in N.Y., Leads Commodity Rally

By Millie Munshi

Jan. 8 (Bloomberg) -- Copper jumped to a seven-week high, leading a commodity rally, on speculation global demand for raw materials won't slacken.

Copper has more than quadrupled in the past five years as producers struggled to meet climbing use in China, the world's largest metals buyer. Inventories monitored by the Shanghai Futures Exchange have fallen for eight consecutive weeks to the lowest since February.

``There's obviously a lot of underlying demand,'' said Ron Goodis, futures trading director at Equidex Brokerage Group Inc. in Closter, New Jersey. ``It's a really positive sign that copper can keep going higher.''

Copper futures for March delivery gained 11.3 cents, or 3.6 percent, to $3.254 a pound at 9:26 a.m. on the Comex division of the New York Mercantile Exchange. The percentage gain was the biggest among 26 raw materials in the UBS Bloomberg Constant Maturity Commodity Index.

Earlier, the metal reached $3.275, the highest since Nov. 15. Futures rose 5.9 percent in 2007, rallying for a sixth straight year.

Stockpiles in China fell 5.7 percent last week to 24,148 metric tons, the lowest level since Feb. 1.

The UBS Bloomberg index gained as much as 1.7 percent today as gold reached a record, energy prices rebounded and most agricultural futures climbed.