London - Base metals are trading just above their overnight lows Thursday and remain firmly on the downtrend, traders and analysts said. The strengthening dollar, a global de-leveraging of risk assets and few signs of a recovery in demand could keep the downward pressure on metals until producers make substantial production cuts. At 1045 GMT, three-month copper had dropped $205 on the day to $3,945 a metric ton. Prices have fallen 20% in the past week. Aluminum was down $9 at $1,994/ton, nickel was $589 lower at $9,411/ton, zinc was down $27 at $1,113/ton, lead was $68 lower at $1,192/ton and tin was down $350 at $11,200/ton. "At the moment, no dynamic is changing," said JP Morgan's Martin Squires in London. "I think the market's going to continue to go down." China, one of the biggest demand drivers for metals, hasn't stepped forward with a stimulus plan that could inject some confidence into markets, Squires said. Although China is rolling out measures to boost its real estate sector, the government hasn't done anything constructive to stimulate the broader economy, he said. UBS analyst John Reade said prices for copper have yet to fall to levels where the highest cost producers break even, which suggests in the current environment they have more room to fall. "(Further) short-term downside in copper - indeed in all industrial metals - looks likely in the short term, especially if de-leveraging and dis-investment continue to hit growth assets and help the dollar," Reade said in a daily report Thursday. Market players are now watching for production cuts from miners to provide some sort of bottom for prices, given that buyers aren't willing to buy with the global economy looking so weak. Fairfax analyst John Meyer said copper prices should start to recover as the world's biggest copper miners cut production and delay expansions and new projects. But JP Morgan's Squires said the miners haven't made substantial cuts. "Yes the miners are hurting, we're seeing that in the headlines, but at the moment, we've seen virtually no cuts." One of the reasons has been that the steep decline in commodity currencies such as the Australian dollar has shielded producers from lower metal prices. China's largest aluminum producers Wednesday announced it was cutting 18% of its production capacity, equivalent to 720,000 tons of metal. The effect was hardly felt though, as aluminum prices are trading near their lowest levels in three years, burdened by a widely held view that the market is in a substantial surplus. Aluminum inventories rose 3,475 tons Thursday to over 1.5 million tons. Inventories for copper, nickel and zinc increased as well.