After a week of steep declines, copper futures eked out a small gain Monday as a slightly weaker dollar buoyed prices.

"You've dropped 60 cents a pound; to bounce up 4 cents after that is nothing. And we're in a very light volume day; it's just going the wrong way for most people's minds," a physical copper trader in the Midwest said.

Three-month copper closed second-ring trade on the London Metal Exchange at $6,346.50 per tonne, up 1.4 percent from $6,260.50 Friday, while March-delivery copper on the Comex division of the New York Mercantile Exchange settled Monday at $2.913 per pound, a 1.9-percent increase from $2.8575 the previous trading day.

"Copper is...