LONDON, Oct 17 (Reuters) – Aluminum prices fell on Monday as large deliveries to London Metal Exchange (LME)-licensed warehouses triggered a sell-off, while copper was supported by a dollar higher. low despite concerns about demand in top consumer China.
* By 1100 GMT, benchmark LME aluminum was down 3% at $2,237 a tonne, while copper was up 0.5% at $7,579.
* Aluminum stocks in LME warehouses rose by 65,825 tonnes to 433,025 on Friday.
* “There was a big jump in (aluminum) inventories. Some think some of that will be Russian,” a metals trader said. “For copper, the key is China, which doesn’t look very healthy at the moment.”
* Consumers shy away from Russian-origin aluminium, which has fueled fears that it will enter the LME system and distort prices.
* Elsewhere, the decline in the dollar, which makes metals cheaper for holders of other currencies, helped boost copper, as did falling stocks in LME warehouses, traders said.
* In other base metals, zinc fell 2.1% to $2,878; lead was down 1% at $2,019; tin fell 0.1% to $19,900; and nickel was down 0.1% at $21,745.
(Reporting by Pratima Desai; edited in Spanish by Carlos Serrano)
