Base metals witnessed range bound trading session and ended the day with negative bias, Copper and zinc shed more than 4% discounting the flu to snow ball into a pandemic and derail the global economy's nascent recovery.

Nickel fell by 5.4% on account of heavy selling by traders and speculators in tandem with a weakening global trend. Reduced off take by consuming industries, such as stainless makers also weighed on nickel prices.

Base Metals floated higher with the equities markets and mostly ended higher than their previous close. Three month LME Copper rose by $150 to end at $4470 and the three month LME Nickel rose by $475 to finish the day at $1150.

Copper futures edged higher on Fridaytracking a fall in LME inventories. Copper stocks on the LME fell by 10,925 tonnes to 429,500 tonnes. Some traders are of the view that China's State Reserves Bureau (SRB), which bought 350,000 tonnes of copper cathode in the first quarter of 2009, could sell around 50,000 tonnes of copper to cash in on recent rallies.

Base metals witnessed correction during yesterday session where most of them fell by 3-4%. Weak housing numbers coupled with rising jobless claims raised concerns about demand for non ferrous metals.

Japan's output of rolled copper products fell by a record 60 percent from a year earlier in March, data showed on Friday, illustrating the sharp collapse in industrial demand from the world's fourth-biggest consumer. Japan's output of rolled copper products fell to 32,338 tonnes in March on a seasonally adjusted basis, down 60.2 percent from a year earlier, preliminary industry data from the Japan Copper and Brass Association showed.

Base metals witnessed range bound trading session and ended the day with negative bias, Three-month copper on the London Metal Exchange fell $150 to $4,390 per tone and metals like Zinc and Nickel also went down sharply.

Chinese buying for stockpiling purposes had helped push copper prices higher this year touching six-month peaks last week but Beijing's State Reserves Bureau may be done buying for now, having breached its target volume and given the current price levels. The global copper market was in a surplus of

Base metals witnessed sharp gap down opening on MCX as fall in equities market on Monday triggered selling in non ferrous metals, later during the evening session speech by U. S. Treasury Secretary reduced anxiety amongst traders.

Risk aversion and stronger dollar have victimized base metals complex. We have seen sharp correction in copper, nickel, zinc and lead. Despite of drawdown in inventories, copper prices plummeted on LME.

Industrial metals slid on Monday with copper tumbling about 5 percent as skidding equities underlined concern about the economy and demand, while a stronger dollar exerted downward pressure. Copper inventories in LME warehouses fell by 7,300 tonnes to 462,325 tonnes, having dropped nearly 80,000 tonnes since mid-February. Cancelled warrants stocks earmarked for delivery rose to 68,325 tonnes from 64,400 tonnes on Friday.