Copper rises

Melbourne/Beijing : London copper shrugged off an early dip to trade higher on Thursday, while nickel jumped as much as 3.8 percent as base metals staged a fragile recovery from the recent trade war-driven sell-off.

Heavy losses in the previous session had pushed London Metal Exchange (LME) copper to its weakest in an almost a year as trade tensions between the United States and China undermined confidence in demand for metals. "For now, prices have corrected as they take their lead from the global equity markets that have rallied off their lows but the metals volumes are thin," Malcolm Freeman, CEO of Kingdom Futures, wrote in a note. The bounce "appears to be no more than a correction with the possibility of more falls being ever present," he cautioned. Three-month LME copper was up 0.8 percent at $6,194.50 a tonne, as of 0711 GMT, following steep losses in the previous session when prices hit $6,081 a tonne, the weakest since July 25, 2017.