OREANDA-NEWS. February 12, 2015. Copper steadied on Wednesday as some investors bet that a floor had been reached after heavy losses, while tin touched a fresh 2-1/2 year low on worries about weak demand.

Three-month copper on the London Metal Exchange ended up 0.09 percent at \\$5,600 a tonne, paring losses of 1.4 percent from the previous session when it hit its lowest in a week.

Prices have stabilised in a range after last month's five-and-a-half-year low of \\$5,339.50 a tonne.

"Copper is trying to look for a bottom, but there are plenty of things that can go wrong, revolving around Ukraine and Greece in particular, and in the background the concern about the extent of the slowdown going on in China," said Stephen Briggs, metals strategist at BNP Paribas in London.

European stocks and the euro fell as euro zone meetings on the Greek debt crisis threatened to give rise to confusion rather than clarity. Gains were capped as physical demand in top metals consumer China was still soft and sentiment bearish ahead of the Chinese new year, said analyst Judy Zhu of Standard Chartered in Shanghai.

"Everybody is just waiting for after the Lunar new year holidays to see how demand will do. So probably we will have to wait till mid-March. In between, prices can move sideways," Zhu said.

Copper's climb off its lows was not driven by improving fundamentals, but by oil's partial rebound from steep losses and expectations of more Chinese stimulus, said JP Morgan in a research note. JPM sees LME cash copper averaging \\$5,800 a tonne in the first quarter.

LME tin hit a session low of \\$17,445 a tonne, the weakest since August 2012.

It closed down 3.02 percent at \\$17,650 a tonne.

Briggs said the market was difficult to understand because lower exports from top producer Indonesia were expected to send it into a deficit this year and support prices.

"This is one metal I'm feeling distinctly uncomfortable about. You have to conclude that demand is very weak," he said.

"Yes, you've had a surge of production out of Myanmar in the past couple of years, but shipments out of Indonesia, the dominant supplier, have been very low." In other metals, aluminium fell 0.76 percent to end at \\$1,822 a tonne, zinc added 0.14 percent to \\$2,118 and nickel shed 0.54 percent to end at \\$14,725.

Lead closed down 1.69 percent at \\$1,801 a tonne.