Red metal blues

Silver’s through the roof, gold’s through the roof, and now, copper’s through the roof as well in what is shaping up to be a Metal Year. Copper’s hit all-time highs and while commentators in the media are attributing the price surge to U.S. stockpiling ahead of import tariffs, it goes deeper than this, as usual. Also, I’ll be adding heavy metal classics at the end of these posts, since it’s only fitting.

On January 6th, Bloomberg reported that copper prices had broken the $13,000 threshold for the first time ever, reaching $13,187 per tonne on the LME. Also Bloomberg, today, reported that copper’s moving higher still, at $13,195 per tonne, after jumping close to $13,400 last week and then retreating because traders took profit. Between these two reports, S&P Global issued its own report on copper “in the age of AI”, which suggested we ain’t seen nothing yet, as a 10-million-tonne shortage looms on the 2040 horizon. The copper mining industry is in crickets mode.

I’ve been following the strange story of copper for a couple of years here on Substack, wondering why miners are so reluctant to start pouring billions down mines both old and new in light of all the predictions for surging demand thanks to the energy transition. Well, as I’ve argued before, copper mining is as much as reality weathervane as is copper demand itself. Predictions are one thing. Reality tends to differ, even if you throw AI into the predictions.