SHANGHAI, Feb. 26 (SMM) – The US and European markets continued to digest China's economic data on Monday while the general election result in Italy was not unveiled. Market worries over Italian election outcome sent Italian stock markets plunging. Meanwhile, the automatic spending cuts in the US are set to take place on March 1, but talks between the two US political parties still made no new progress. In this context, global stock markets were weighed on. Testimony on Tuesday from US Fed Chairman Ben Bernanke may offer investors clues about when the Fed intends to rein in its ultra-loose monetary policy, but they still have to contend with the looming fiscal cliff. Investor wait-and-see sentiment was thus growing, which caused the euro to fall sharply by 1% to touch a six-month low. US equity markets closed significantly down by nearly 2%, with the Dow Jones Industrial Average showing the largest single-day loss since November 2012. Hence, LME copper experienced volatility and climbed to USD 7,900/mt before sliding rapidly at the tail of trading, with settlement price at a recent low of USD 7,830/mt and narrowing daily gains. In other news, LME copper stocks exceeded 430,000 mt the same day as the proportion of cancelled warrants to LME stocks dropped further to 6.47%.

LME copper prices will fluctuate between USD 7,800-7,880/mt during Tuesday's Asian trading session. SHFE copper prices will also fluctuate at current levels after starting slightly down, and SHFE 1306 copper contract will hover in a range of RMB 56,800-57,500/mt. Shanghai spot copper discounts are estimated between RMB 100-200/mt versus SHFE 1303 copper contract.