Copper heads for best week in a month as trade fears ease

MELBOURNE, Sept 21 (Reuters) – London copper rose on Friday and was on track to post its biggest weekly advance in four weeks as investors viewed that trade tariffs would have a softer impact to global growth than earlier feared. FUNDAMENTALS: * COPPER: London Metal Exchange copper rose 1 percent to $6,140 a tonne by 0217 GMT, up nearly 3 percent this week and close to its highest in more than one month. Shanghai Futures Exchange copper edged up 0.1 percent to 49,510 yuan ($7,235) a tonne. The Shanghai Futures Exchange will be closed on Monday for the mid-autumn festival. * COPPER OPTIONS: Swiss trading house Trafigura was among the first to trade Shanghai Futures Exchange (ShFE) copper options at their debut on Friday, according to a source, as the Chinese commodity exchange aims to challenge its New York and London rivals. * ZINC PREMIUMS: Premiums for zinc have surged to $345 a tonne, the highest in at least six years amid a squeeze on supply in China. * DOLLAR: The dollar struggled near two-month lows, while the yen also sagged on Friday on reduced safe haven demand amid a switch in investors’ view that the Sino-U.S. trade conflict would be less damaging to global growth than initially feared. * TRADE: Still, global economic growth has peaked in the face of rising trade frictions and emerging market turbulence, the OECD said on Thursday, as it trimmed its earlier outlook. * BHP: Global miner BHP Billiton Ltd said on Thursday that a fire at its Spence copper mine in Chile had forced it to partially shut down operations. Spence produced 198,600 tonnes of copper in 2017. * ALUMINA: The Shanghai Futures Exchange (ShFE) aims to release a draft of an alumina futures contract in late 2018 or early 2019, after requests from the market to create a price benchmark for the feedstock used to make aluminium, an official said on Thursday.