Overnight Copper Futures Prices Edged Lower as US Dollar Rallied

LME copper closed at $8,921.5/mt overnight, up 0.17%. Trading volume was 15,000 lots and open interest stood at 254,000 lots. The most active SHFE 2303 copper contract finished at 68,150 yuan/mt overnight, down 0.04%. Trading volume was 32,000 lots, and open interest stood at 158,000 lots. On the macro front, affected by Fed Chairman Powell's dovish speech, the dollar was running at a relatively low level. The market is awaiting more economic data to predict the direction of interest rate hikes. In terms of fundamentals, Guangdong's inventory has fallen for two consecutive days due to the obvious improvement in consumption, and it has now fallen below the 60,000 mt level. The transaction in the spot market gradually picked up, and the structure of contango on SHFE copper expanded. The demand has continued to improve, and it is expected that the upstream and downstream producers will fully recover by the end of February. Due to the uncertainties over macro, it is expected that copper prices will remain rangebound.