Continued concerns over the eurozone debt situation led copper futures, yet again, to tumble more than 3 percent on Wednesday.

After just a day of posting gains of more than 2 per cent, prices immediately fell to their biggest one-day drop in three weeks.

Three-month copper on the London Metal Exchange lost a value of 3.2 per cent, closing at $US7,540 a tonne. On Tuesday, it reached a $US7,790 three-week high.

In New York, the key March COMEX contract fell 9.40 US cents, or 2.7 per cent, to close at $US3.4345 per pound, after trading between $US3.42 and $US3.5245.

"Copper is down as investors reassess the major upside moves in equities and base metals," Adam Klopfenstein, a market strategist, told Bloomberg News. "Seeing the euro back below the critical $1.30 level leads to a 'risk-off' scenario."

The euro hit $1.2898, approaching an 11-year low.

The favorable manufacturing data from the U.S., as well as from emerging economies China and India, coupled with the low German unemployment rate in December, failed to uplift global investor confidence as most fear the two-year-old financial trouble impacting the eurozone will spread to the otherwise stable economies.

"There's too much uncertainty," Koun-Ken Lee, a commodities strategist at Singapore, told Reuters News. "No one knows if Europe will blow up. As people come back to the market, the volatility will return."

"Investors are facing the reality that the underlying concerns in Europe still remain and the underlying concerns from a global perspective still remain," analyst Adam Sarhan told Sky News Australia. "Nothing has changed."