DJ Comex Copper Pre-Open: Up 500 Points As London Prices RiseDOW...

DJ Comex Copper Pre-Open: Up 500 Points As London Prices Rise
DOW JONES NEWSWIRES


High-grade copper futures in New York are called to open around 500 points
higher on Friday, said traders.

In London overnight, copper resumed its path higher on news of another
possible supply disruption, traders there said.

Nine-one percent of the voting unionized workers at the Lomas Bayas mine in
Chile were in favor of going on strike May 7, according to results announced
late Thursday. Workers could walk off the job as early as Tuesday, but a union
representative said the company anticipates mine owner Falconbridge (FAL) will
want a five-day goodwill negotiations period.

In other markets that have the potential to impact metal in the short term,
the euro is near steady at $1.2535, compared with $1.2533 late Thursday
afternoon. The New York Board of Trade's U.S. dollar index is up 1 tick to
86.64.

In screen trading ahead of the pit open, the June S&P 500 futures are down
2.40 points to 1,312.70. June crude is steady at $70.97 a barrel in overnight
activity.

Several widely followed U.S. economic indicators are on the calendar for
Friday morning. They include:

-- advance first-quarter gross domestic product at 8:30 a.m. EDT, forecast to
be up 5% after 1.7% growth in the fourth quarter;

-- first-quarter Employment Cost Index, also at 8:30 a.m. EDT, expected to
show a 0.9% rise;

-- University of Michigan end-of-May consumer-sentiment index expected around
9:45 a.m. EDT, forecast to be 89.0, compared to 89.2 in mid-April and 88.9 at
the end of March; and

-- Chicago Purchasing Managers Index at 10 a.m. EDT, forecast to slip to 58.5
in April from 60.4 in March, but remaining well above the 50 threshold
generally seen as the breaking point on whether the economy is still expanding
or contracting.

In New York on Thursday, copper futures tumbled in the wake of a rate hike in
China and also in sympathy spillover liquidation with silver after the
Securities and Exchange Commission granted final approval to a silver
exchange-traded fund, which had been widely expected. Sell stops accelerated
copper's losses, with the July contract settling 13.30 cents lower at $3.1810
per pound.

Inventories of copper in London Metal Exchange warehouses fell 225 metric
tons Friday, leaving them at 117,725 metric tons. The most recent Comex stocks
data, released late Thursday afternoon, were down 50 short tons at 17,632 short
tons.

Weekly data from the Shanghai Futures Exchange showed a fall of 3,088 metric
tons to 31,117 metric tons of deliverable stock.



-By Allen Sykora, Dow Jones Newswires; 541-318-8765;
[email protected]