METALS-Copper slips after four-day rise, economic woes drag

SINGAPORE, Oct 3 (Reuters) - Copper fell on Wednesday after
climbing for four days, as a fragile global economy and Europe's
lingering debt crisis curbed buying interest, with a week-long
public holiday in top copper consumer China keeping trading
volumes extremely thin.

FUNDAMENTALS
* Three-month copper on the London Metal Exchange
had eased 0.4 percent to $8,296.75 a tonne by 0113 GMT, after
gaining more than 2 percent over the past four sessions.
* Despite recent gains, copper has been trapped in a narrow
range in lean volumes with China away since Monday. The volume
of copper traded on LME Select stands at 117 lots so far.
* The industrial metal hit a 4-1/2 month peak of $8,422 on
Sept. 19, powered by stimulus measures from global central banks
to bolster a flagging global economy. But investors have
struggled to push prices higher with demand prospects,
particularly in China, remaining gloomy.
* China's official purchasing managers' index for the
services sector fell to 53.7 in September from 56.3 in August,
weighed by lacklustre new orders, a survey from the National
Bureau of Statistics showed.
* Key for markets this week is the U.S. nonfarm payrolls
data for September due on Friday. The Federal Reserve in
September began a bid to buy $40 billion in mortgage-backed
securities every month until the jobs outlook improved
substantially and Friday's payrolls data will be the initial
test of whether that is paying off.
* U.S. employers are expected to have added 113,000 jobs to
their payrolls last month, an increase from 96,000 in August,
with the unemployment rate edging up by a tenth of a percentage
point to 8.2 percent, according to a Reuters survey of
economists.
* Spanish Prime Minister Mariano Rajoy said a request for
European aid was not imminent following a report the
debt-saddled country could apply for help as soon as this
weekend.
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MARKETS NEWS
* The euro was slightly on the backfoot after Spain dented
hopes that it would soon ask for a bailout, while the Australian
dollar dropped on prospects of more domestic interest rate cuts
following Tuesday's easing.
* U.S. crude slipped below $92 a barrel, pressured by
worries of slowing economic growth in the main consumer nations,
while the festering euro zone debt crisis added to uncertainty.

DATA/EVENTS (GMT)
0748 France Markit Services PMI
0753 Germany Markit Services PMI
0758 Euro zone Markit Services PMI
0900 Euro zone Retail sales
1215 U.S. ADP employment report
1400 U.S. ISM Non-Manufacturing PMI

Base metals prices at 0113 GMT
Metal Last Change Pct Move YTD pct chg
LME Cu 8296.75 -28.75 -0.35 9.17
HG COPPER DEC2 378.40 -1.70 -0.45 10.13
LME Alum 2094.75 -12.25 -0.58 3.70
LME Zinc 2092.00 -6.00 -0.29 13.39
LME Nickel 18400.00 -50.00 -0.27 -1.66
LME Lead 2300.00 0.00 +0.00 13.02
LME Tin 22001.00 -294.00 -1.32 14.59

(Reporting by Manolo Serapio Jr.; Editing by Joseph Radford)