OREANDA-NEWS. March 10, 2015. London copper bounced off early two-week lows on Monday after some Chinese banking stocks soared on hopes Beijing would grant more brokerage licences, which forced copper shorts to cover and offset the impact of gloomy Chinese imports and a strong dollar.

China said it was considering issuing banks with brokerage licences as part of financial reforms, which sent stocks of banks up sharply.

The gains in metals came despite the dollar's strength after Friday's jobs report showed U.S. employers stepped up hiring in February, which for some investors made a Federal Reserve interest rate rise more likely in June.

Commodities were further unsettled by weak trade data out of top user China at the weekend, said analyst Daniel Morgan of UBS in Sydney.

"China's start to the year feels a tad soft specifically on copper and coal," he said, adding that the full picture for Chinese demand wouldn't be clear until late April, given this year's unusually late Lunar New Year.

Three-month copper on the London Metal Exchange traded up 0.6 percent at \\$5,778.50 by 0836 GMT, after it earlier slipped to \\$5,714, its weakest since Feb. 24. Prices shed 1.5 percent on Friday.

The most traded May copper contract on the Shanghai Futures Exchange pared losses of more than 1 percent at one point to end down just 0.2 percent at 42,300 yuan (\\$6,754) a tonne.

"The market may have been a touch short on copper as there have been stops triggered to help fuel the rally," said a trader in Singapore.

China's exports picked up in the first two months of 2015, propelled by February's exceptionally strong performance that was inflated by the timing of Lunar New Year, while a slide in imports pointed to persistent weakness in the economy.

China's imports of commodities eased again in February, as the Lunar New Year holiday took a bite out of shipping volumes, preliminary customs data showed on Sunday.

Copper imports, at 280,000 tonnes in February, slowed by nearly a third from January and were down more than a quarter from a year earlier.

"While the slowdown in opportunistic buying we first noticed in January appears to have continued, weak demand from the manufacturing and construction sectors also appears to have contributed to the fall," ANZ said in a note.

"However, in light of the increasing supply-side disruptions being reported in February, we remain of the view that buying will pick up over the coming months."

Elsewhere, output at the Pelambres mine of Chilean copper miner Antofagasta Plc has been reduced by about 5,000 tonnes in the past week due to protests by local villagers, Pelambres said.

Reflecting a more optimistic view on copper prices, hedge funds and money managers switched to a net long position of 998 contracts in the week to March 3, adding 1,341 contracts, U.S. Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CFTC) data showed.