Copper gains

Melbourne/Sydney : London copper inched up in early trade on Tuesday as an advancing U.S. dollar lost steam, while Shanghai copper recovered from a drop in the previous session to trade marginally higher.

London copper hit a two-week low overnight, weighed down by a stronger dollar, which encouraged sellers in the benchmark U.S. dollar-denominated contract.

"We don´t expect to see that same level of selling today on the currency," said a commodities trader in Perth.

Three-month copper on the London Metal Exchange was up 0.09 percent at $7,132 a tonne by 0134 GMT, after closing almost unchanged in the previous session.

Prices topped out at $7,312.50 a tonne on Dec. 28, the highest since January 2014.

The most-traded copper contract on the Shanghai Futures Exchange was 0.33 percent higher at 54,780 yuan ($8,423.80) a tonne. It dropped 0.9 percent on Monday.