Copper price in London hits new high amid bullish calls

[Ben Graham]

Copper prices in London hit a fresh high on Friday in the wake of bullish calls by participants of this week’s industry gathering in Asia.

Three-month LME futures rose as much as 2.5% to a record $11,210.50 a ton, before pulling back below the $11,000 level.

Click on chart for live prices.

The surge comes after miners, smelters and traders met in Shanghai this week, with discussions focused on a tightening market.

The jump also came after Kostas Bintas, the high-profile head of metals at Mercuria, renewed his bullish prediction for prices, warning that a rush to ship metal to the US risks draining the rest of the world’s inventories.

Mercuria metals boss says ‘this is the big one’ for copper bulls

“This is the big one,” he said in an interview at the end of an industry conference in Shanghai. “If the world keeps going like this, we will be left without copper cathodes in the rest of the world.” 

Natalie Scott-Gray, a senior metals analyst at StoneX Financial, said Bintas’ bullish call comes “against a backdrop in which we already, for year-end, have a perfect storm bull narrative,” citing the impact of tariffs, an improving macroeconomic outlook and supply disruptions.

Meanwhile, US copper futures also rose 2% to as much as $5.3095 per lb., as the Comex resumed trading after suffering from one of its longest outages in years. Earlier this year, copper prices on the exchange surged to a record $5.9585 per lb. in anticipation of US tariffs on the metal.

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