The base metals were all red-stained on Wednesday. Copper declined from the pre-dawn hours to the noon hour, but recovered a little ground late to finish at $1.4561/lb., down nearly 3 cents.

Nickel’s chart looked very similar, and it closed on a small upnote at $4.6954/lb., down more than 18 cents. Zinc had a weak day, ending at $0.557/lb., down a penny and a half. Aluminum was slowly lower, shedding a penny, to $0.6547/lb., while lead failed to get even a small late day bump, dropping to its intraday low of $0.5018/lb., down a penny and a quarter.

The industrial metals were down across the board, with copper leading the way lower after the weak retail sales numbers reinforced the notion that there isn’t anything bright in the metals’ future.

John Gross, publisher of the Copper Journal, sees the metal as rangebound at the moment, with key support in the benchmark March