Category: Copper
The analysis published under this category are as follows.
Wednesday, May 08, 2024
Copper: The India Factor / Commodities / Copper
By: The_Energy_Report
Michael Ballanger of GGM Advisory Inc. shares how India's copper demand may impact the metal's price. Ballanger also reviews the gold and silver market, and shares one company he thinks might have a VMS project.
As I was doing some research this week on the history of copper demand, what started as a focus on China wound up with some interesting revelations surrounding the economic history of neighboring India. Despite going to high school with a number of classmates who had immigrated from India, I never actually took the time to understand the rich history of India, largely because the narrative was always centered around the British Raj and how colonialism saved the poor savages from a grim future.
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Wednesday, July 26, 2023
Global Copper market is entering an age of extremely large deficits / Commodities / Copper
By: Richard_Mills
Simply put, the road to reaching net zero begins and ends with copper. All infrastructure built to support renewable energy uses large amounts of copper, as the metal is a highly efficient conductor of electricity and heat.
To keep the energy transition going, millions of feet of copper wiring will be required for strengthening the world’s power grids, and hundreds of thousands of tonnes more are needed to build wind and solar farms. An offshore wind turbine, for example, contains 8 tonnes of copper per megawatt of generation capacity.
Electric vehicles, now a fast-rising source of demand, use over twice as much copper as gasoline-powered cars, which contain about 30 kg. Not to mention, there is more than 180 kg of copper in the average home, reminding us just how indispensable the metal really is.
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Friday, May 27, 2022
Lower Copper price due to Chinese lockdowns is only Temporary / Commodities / Copper
By: Richard_Mills
Copper is one of our most important metals with more than 20 million tonnes consumed each year across a variety of industries, including building construction (wiring & piping,) power generation/ transmission, and electronic product manufacturing. The red metal is also a key component in transportation; electric vehicles use about four times as much copper as regular internal combustion engine vehicles.
A combination of supply disruptions, historically low copper stockpiles and higher energy costs, propelled copper to a new all-time high of $4.94/lb on Friday, March 4.
Since then, the base metal has lost momentum mostly because of lower demand in China, the world’s biggest consumer of copper end products.
The latest data shows China’s copper imports fell 4% in April, year on year, as the return of covid-19 forced lockdowns of several Chinese cities including Shanghai, hurting manufacturing and consumption.
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Monday, March 14, 2022
Copper and Nickel Commodity Market Updates / Commodities / Copper
By: Richard_Mills
Copper
The global copper supply crisis is getting deeper with each passing day.
Even disregarding the military crisis in Europe and the piling sanctions against Russia that have rocked the commodity markets, copper has always been in a tough spot simply because of its fast-rising demand and the critical role in the modern economy.
More than 20 million tonnes of the metal are being consumed each year across a variety of industries; these include building construction, power generation and transmission, and electronic product manufacturing.
Roskill forecasts total copper consumption will more than double and exceed 43 million tonnes by 2035, driven by population and GDP growth, urbanization and electricity demand.
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Tuesday, October 19, 2021
It’s not just Copper; GYX indicated cyclical the whole time / Commodities / Copper
By: Gary_Tanashian
Copper makes the headlines, but GYX has been bullish all along; gold awaits its time as the message from metals land is bullish, risk ‘on’ and cyclical
While copper went through its correction we have been noting each week in NFTRH that the Industrial Metals index, GYX had never aborted its bullish stance. Trends remained up and the index price held the SMA 50’s intermediate trend all the while copper (CPER, which I hold, in lower panel) worked through its summer correction.
The Industrial Metals are a primary indicator of cyclical inflation and by extension, economic reflation.
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Wednesday, April 21, 2021
World Economies Need to Find a Lot More COPPER! / Commodities / Copper
By: Richard_Mills
As the third most-consumed metal on the planet, behind iron ore and aluminum, copper is all around us. Found naturally in the Earth’s crust, copper was among the first metals used by early humans, dating back to the 8th century, BC.
Three thousand years later homo sapiens figured out how to smelt copper from its ore, and to alloy it with tin to create bronze. Bronze was useful for tools and weapons, making it one of the most important inventions in the history of civilization.
The Copper Age
Nothing happens without copper; as it turns out, not even civilization itself. Beginning around 5,000 BC, the “Chalcolithic” (from the Greek “khalkos” for copper and “lithos” for stone) or Copper Age was a transitionary period between the Neolithic (Stone Age) and the Bronze Age.
It was during this time that copper was introduced as a material that could be worked into metal, paving the way towards the use of bronze later on.
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Wednesday, March 17, 2021
Copper Shortage Narrative Goes Mainstream / Commodities / Copper
By: Richard_Mills
Mainstream media and the large mining companies are finally catching on to what we at AOTH have been saying for the past two years: the copper market is heading for a severe supply shortage due to a perfect storm of under-exploration/ lack of discovery of new deposits, clashing with a huge increase in demand due to electrification and decarbonization.
Dramatic price rise
Copper is trading over $4.00 a pound this year on rapidly tightening physical markets, rebounding economic growth especially in China, the top metals consumer, and the expectation that the era of low inflation in key economies may soon be over.
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Thursday, February 25, 2021
Warren Buffett Buys a Copper Stock! / Commodities / Copper
By: Gary_Tanashian
Just kidding. Warren Buffett’s Berkshire Hathaway may or may not own copper stocks. I did not dig deep enough to find out. For the purposes of this post it does not matter.
With the Buffett Buys a Gold Stock! hysterics last summer, the subsequent (and inevitable) fallout and the Buffett Pukes a Gold Stock! resolution, you never know. It’s worth asking the question about what sort of investors are now true-believing in copper and the industrial metals where once upon a time last summer gold was the object of affection.
Look, the contrarian dynamics in play now are 180° from where they were last spring, coming out of the deflationary crash, when we first started to get a handle on and act upon the coming inflation aimed at reflating the economy. NFTRH has used a lot of indicators, starting then and continuing today to be on the right (inflationary) side of this macro dynamic. With all due respect and foresight about macro decision points to come, we remain on the inflationary side today.
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Wednesday, December 09, 2020
Copper, the Most Critical Metal / Commodities / Copper
By: Richard_Mills
In 2018, before the trade war between the US and China put the boots to copper demand, and covid-19 mine closures/ abandoned expansion plans crimped supply, we made a bold prediction: that copper supply is NOT going to be able to keep up with demand in the long-term. Here’s what we wrote, in The coming copper crunch:
Even with expansions at existing mines and the ramp-up of the relatively few new copper mines like Cobre Panama, Radomiro Tomic and Toquepalain, it will not be enough to meet the onslaught of demand that is coming from China as it continues to modernize and urbanize, and electric vehicles, which use three times as much copper as regular ones. In 2016 Chinese automakers sold 28 million cars. If China follows through on its promise to go 100% electric, that would mean 2,380,000,000 kilograms of copper. At the current production rate of 20 million tonnes a year, that’s 119 years worth of copper! Just to produce enough copper for electric cars in China.
Do we expect 100% EV penetration? No. But the shift to electrification of our transportation system is real, it’s not going to go away or stop. Because it’s as real as the shift from wood to coal to fossil fuels and now to lithium. That means massive new copper supplies are needed just for Chinese EVs, whatever the EV penetration eventually turns out to be. And remember there’s the rest of the world to supply for EVs, charging infrastructure, and all of copper’s other uses.
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Tuesday, November 03, 2020
As China goes green, Copper market expected to tighten further / Commodities / Copper
By: Richard_Mills
The most pessimistic forecasts of copper demand, and pricing, during the worst pandemic in 102 years, have failed to materialize.
From a four-year low in March, when the coronavirus slammed into Europe and North America, the red metal used widely in construction, communications, transportation and energy transmission, has mounted a serious comeback.
As of this writing spot copper is trading at $3.08 per pound, compared to around $2.10/lb in mid-March – a gain of 46%. The spot price has stayed above $3.00 since Oct. 8 – which is remarkable considering the reports of impending economic doom, amid a second wave of covid-19 infections in Europe and North America.
The following analysis by AOTH has copper showing no signs of slowing down; in fact, while the copper market was tight before the pandemic began, we expect it to tighten even further, due to a constellation of factors, starting with China.
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Wednesday, October 21, 2020
The Copper/Gold Ratio Would Change the Macro / Commodities / Copper
By: Gary_Tanashian
The Copper/Gold ratio is saying something. That something is that a cyclical, pro-inflation and thus pro-economic reflation metal shown earlier, remaining nominally positive on a down market day has, in relation to gold, taken out two important moving averages (daily SMA 50 & SMA 200) and is currently riding the short-term EMA 20 upward. RSI and MACD are positive.
Copper: Pro-cyclical inflation, pro-reflation, pro-economy.
Gold: Counter-cyclical, monetary, with inflationary utility.
Given the right circumstances (like desperate monetary and fiscal policy), which are in play on the wider macro, gold will probably do quite well moving forward. But maybe – for a while – not as well as some commodities if the Copper/Gold ratio really is up to something positive here.
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Thursday, August 27, 2020
Are You Positioned for a Copper Price Explosion? / Commodities / Copper
By: Metals_Report
Independent financial analyst Matt Badiali presents the investment case for copper.
Copper will be the next metal to break out in 2020, and it's all about demand.
The price of copper just broke through $3.00 per pound. The red metal's price rose 45% so far in 2020. But that is still well below its 2011 high of $4.50 per pound.
That could change in the second half of this year.
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Wednesday, February 12, 2020
Copper Market is a Coiled Spring / Commodities / Copper
By: Richard_Mills
As the third most-consumed metal on earth, behind iron and aluminum, copper is all around us. Found naturally in the earth’s crust, copper was among the first metals used by early humans, dating back to the 8th century, BC.
Three thousand years later homo sapiens figured out how to smelt copper from its ore, and to alloy it with tin to create bronze. Bronze was useful for tools and weapons, making it one of the most important inventions in the history of civilization. Copper was later used in roofing, and still is, for its strength and oxidized green look, as well as in works of art. Copper, or Cu, is also essential for all living organisms.
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Friday, September 27, 2019
More smelters, scrap metal ban driving Chinese copper imports / Commodities / Copper
By: Richard_Mills
Despite evidence of a slowing economy, shipments of raw materials are gliding across Chinese docks at a torrid pace, especially metals, which form the backbone of China’s industrial supply chain.
In fact a recent report shows that, while Chinese imports are down 5% compared to last year, and the trade war is hitting China’s manufacturing sector, imports of raw materials and ores “continue their seemingly perpetual upward trend.”
A blistering trade
MINING.com quotes BMO Global Commodities Research, the report’s author, saying that “In our opinion, while the trade war has caused many problems for China, it has not shaken the overall commodity business model of importing raw materials, having enough process capacity and ideally exporting a small amount of finished product as an inflation hedge.”
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Monday, August 12, 2019
All Eyes On Copper / Commodities / Copper
By: Chris_Vermeulen
Copper is a fairly strong measure of the strength and capacity of the global economy and global manufacturing. Right now, Copper has been under quite a bit of pricing pressure and has fallen from levels above $4.50 (near 2011) to levels near $2.55. Most recently, Copper has rotated higher to levels near $3.25 after President Trump was elected on November 2016, yet has recently fallen as trade and global economic concerns become more intense.
This should be viewed as a strong warning sign that institutional traders and investors are very concerned that the future economic and manufacturing activities throughout the world are continuing to contract. Copper is used in various forms throughout all types of manufacturing and consumer products, such as computers, building & infrastructure, electronics, chemical & medical use as well as automobile and aircraft manufacturing. It makes sense that copper prices would be a leading indicator for much of the global economy and relate to economic output and capacity.
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Wednesday, May 16, 2018
The Coming Copper Crunch / Commodities / Copper
By: Richard_Mills
Copper had one of it best years ever in 2017, rising 27% on the back of supply disruptions and steady demand from China, by far the largest copper consumer.
Commodities analysts are usually wrong about copper supply, always predicting a glut in the market for the ubiquitous metal used in everything from piping for plumbing to wiring in houses, to components of electric vehicles. What they fail to account for is the inevitable stoppages at the major copper mines due mostly to strikes and weather problems.
In 2017 however they were right. In January last year a collection of analysts - BMI, Goldman Sachs, Citigroup and TD - were all bullish on copper, saying that after a terrible 2015 and 2016, it would be the strongest performing metal of 2017 with predictions of up to $6,200 a tonne come mid-year. By the end of 2017 copper futures trading on the London Metal Exchange (LME) were at their highest in four years, $7,236.50 a tonne or $3.28 a pound. Copper wasn’t the best performing metal of 2017 (that would be cobalt) but it was third behind palladium.
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Tuesday, January 02, 2018
Copper Outlook at Critical Juncture and Implications for the Silver Price / Commodities / Copper
By: Metals_Report
Technical analyst Clive Maund delves into the reasons behind copper's recent rise and what that could mean for silver.
We have seen an unusually steady uptrend in copper this month that has resulted in it appreciating by about 10%, which might not sound like much, but makes a big difference if you are a producer with fixed costs. What is remarkable about this uptrend is not only that it came hard on the heels of a high volume smackdown in the early days of the month that at the time looked bearish, but that we have seen 16 days trading days in a row of higher closes as of the close of trading on Thursday, as can be seen on the 3-month chart for copper shown below. After doing some extensive research it has been discovered that the fundamental reason for this day after day seemingly interminable uptrend was that a prominent Chinese buyer, who has an old fashioned way of doing things, was walking over to the London Metals Exchange every day for weeks with his black briefcase in hand and buying roughly the same amount of copper.
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Thursday, December 28, 2017
COPX Copper Miners ETF Big Base = Big Move / Commodities / Copper
By: Rambus_Chartology
COPX Copper miners etf, has finally made it back up to the top rail of an expanding flat top triangle which is consolidating the June rally. The 20 day ema has just crossed back above the 50 day ema which is giving us a buy signal.
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Friday, September 01, 2017
Copper Strong, Good News for Chile, Bad News for the US / Commodities / Copper
By: Metals_Report
Technical analyst Clive Maund analyzes why the rising copper price is good news for Chile.
Copper is looking strong, apparently due in part to China stockpiling it, and this of course augurs well for the Precious Metals, especially silver, as copper "shows the way," which is why it is known as Dr. Copper. As we can see on its 5-year chart, it has already broken out of a Head-and-Shoulders bottom to enter a bullmarket. Right now it is overbought and has resistance to work its way through, so periods of consolidation are to be expected.
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Monday, July 03, 2017
Copper New Intermediate Cycle : Bullish / Commodities / Copper
By: SurfCity
Copper confirmed a new Intermediate Cycle this week with a breach and close above my Red Yearly Cycle Down trend line (see first two charts). Given that this last Yearly Cycle was extremely Right Translated, cycle methodology would indicate we should expect Copper to make new highs in the year ahead of us.
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