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Copper moved higher on Wednesday amid the release of some positive economic data in the U.S. March closed at $3.016, up $1.80 on the session. The industrial metal pared some of its losses from earlier in the week.

The red metal is down about 20 cents this week, after a strong run last week. The metal closed Friday’s session at a two-week high of $3.157 a pound and ended the week up 5%. Before the recent rally, the red metal had been trading near a multi-month low on general economic concerns.

Investors are looking ahead to the Federal Open Market Committee meeting, which is planned for Dec. 11. Most experts expect to see an interest rate cut for the third straight meeting. The question for many has become whether the Fed will elect to slash rates by either 25 or 50 basis points.

On the economic front, Wednesday morning, the Department of Labor released its revised report on labor productivity and unit labor costs in the third quarter, showing that productivity growth in the quarter was revised up more than expected. The report showed that the pace of productivity growth in the third quarter was revised up to 6.3 percent from the previously reported 4.9 percent growth. Economists had expected a more modest upward revision to 5.5 percent growth.

At the same time, the Labor Department said that unit labor costs fell 2.0 percent in the third quarter compared to the 0.2 percent drop previously reported. The drop in unit labor costs had been expected to be revised to a decrease a 1.0 percent.

Meanwhile, Automatic Data Processing, Inc. (ADP) released its report on private sector employment in the month of November, showing job growth for the month that came in well above economists’ expectations. The report showed that non-farm private employment increased by 189,000 jobs in November following an upwardly revised increase of 119,000 jobs in October. Economists had expected a much smaller increase of about 53,000 jobs. ADP said that the better than expected job growth reflected broad based employment strength, with employment in the manufacturing, construction, and financial services showing signs of accelerating following recent downward pressure.

Gold slipped Wednesday, giving back some of its recent gains. February gold traded at $803.50, down $4.10 on the session. The precious metal climbed as high as $813.00 in electronic trading, but moved lower throughout the early part of the session, reaching as low as $797.60 before bouncing back.

The drop came as the U.S. dollar saw strength. The greenback rallied against the euro to reached its highest level in nearly three weeks. The greenback also moved higher against the Swiss franc and British pound in morning transactions.

Crude oil finished a volatile session lower on Wednesday amid the release two key announcements that some experts thought might take prices a lot higher. Light sweet crude oil closed $87.49, down 83 cents on the session. Traders considered OPEC’s decision to leave production unchanged when many experts expected a rise of up to 1 million barrels a day. Later, crude oil weekly inventory data showed a drop of nearly 8 million barrels.

Oil climbed to as high as $90.39 after OPEC’s announcement, but gave back most of those gains by the late morning. Crude slipped even further in the afternoon and closed lower for the seventh time in eight sessions.

Source: MoneyForex.com

This entry was posted on Wednesday, December 5th, 2007 at 11:21 pm and is filed under Forex News. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.