By Caroline Valetkevitch
NEW YORK (Reuters) - Oil prices fell to their lowest since mid-September on Wednesday on worries about growing U.S. stockpiles, while the U.S. dollar took a breather from recent gains.
U.S. stocks turned higher by midday, though the drop in oil prices weighed on energy shares and limited gain. European shares ended up 0.7 percent.
In the metals market, copper prices earlier neared a six-year low after mixed Chinese data showed growth in the world's second-biggest economy was still in low gear, but were last trading higher.
Oil prices fell as traders awaited government data, expected to show another weekly build in U.S. crude stockpiles. U.S. crude inventories likely rose for a seventh week in a row last week, according to a report by industry group American Petroleum Institute (API) and a Reuters poll that surveyed nine analysts.
Brent was down $1.26 cents, or about 2.7 percent, at $46.12 barrel, while U.S. crude's West Texas Intermediate (WTI) benchmark was down $1 at $43.21 a barrel.
The dollar, which has been on a charge since strong U.S. jobs data last week boosted the chances of Federal Reserve rate hike next month, slid against most major currencies.
"The moves today look technical more than anything, but there is some dollar weakness," said Ulrich Leuchtmann, head of FX research at Commerzbank in Frankfurt.
The U.S. bond market was closed for Veterans Day, adding to the day's muted trading in other U.S. markets.
The dollar index was down 0.2 percent to 99.054 after touching its highest in seven months on Tuesday.
The euro gained 0.25 percent against the dollar after European Central Bank President Mario Draghi's comments at the Bank of England Open Forum, even though he did not address monetary policy.
Gains in technology shares, including Microsoft, helped support U.S. stocks.
The Dow Jones industrial average rose 38.85 points, or 0.22 percent, to 17,797.06, the S&P 500 gained 4.83 points, or 0.23 percent, to 2,086.55 and the Nasdaq Composite added 26.84 points, or 0.53 percent, to 5,110.08.
MSCI's all-country world index was up 0.3 percent, while European shares provisionally closed up 0.7 percent.
CHINA DATA HITS METALS
China's October industrial production growth cooled to 5.6 percent year-on-year, slightly lower than the 5.8 percent gain economists polled by Reuters had expected, though it was cushioned by a just-above-forecast 11 percent jump in retail sales.
Copper - China's growth-hungry economy is its biggest consumer - hit its lowest since mid-2009 at $4,914 a tonne, but was last up at $4,934.50. Zinc and lead, two other industrial metals, hit multi-year lows earlier, as well.
At the same time, the Baltic Exchange's main sea freight index, which tracks rates for ships carrying dry bulk commodities, continued to fall.
"China's recovery is slow. It's really affecting all the base metals," said analyst Helen Lau of broker Argonaut Securities in Hong Kong.
(Additional reporting by Dion Rabouin in New York, Marc Jones in London, Wayne Cole in Sydney and Nichola Saminather in Singapore; Editing by Tom Heneghan and Nick Zieminski)
