By Jim Williams
Copper continues to be a pleasant surprise as trading this week remains steady to slightly positive. Overnight trading saw the red metal climb 1.3% in three-month copper prices. This comes after gaining 0.6% Monday. Copper still sits over $7,000 a ton, and as the COMEX chart shows, opened this morning at $3.17 a pound.
Copper's latest success comes after China's head of the state planning agency announced over the weekend that China is on track to achieve the official growth target for 2017 even as the country's housing market slows.
“Chinese data started on a promising note with property price rises almost slowing to a standstill which was one of the objectives of the government to both calm inflation down and stop investors using property as a speculative product,” broker Kingdom Futures said in a report posted by Reuters. “That would come under the heading of 'so far so good,' but raises the question of where the investors will turn next and could they come back into the commodity markets?”
Goldman analyst Hui Shan weighed in on copper's future, “Combining our supply and demand balance forecast with our forward views on growth and currencies, we believe the 2011-2016 surplus market is over and copper is poised to go higher, with the potential to surpass $8,000″ by 2020,” she told the Financial Times. You can read the entire article here.
Goldman Gushes Copper News
Goldman continues to talk copper. “”We expect China copper demand to increase 3.1 per cent in 2017 and 1.8 per cent per year on average from 2017 to 2022,” said Goldman analysts Hui Shan, Jefferey Currie, Mikhail Sprogis, and Yubin Fu, in a research report on Tuesday. Check out the entire article here.
President Trump Good for Copper (and Commodities)?
Frequent tED contributor Andrew Hecht has written an in-depth article showing why he thinks President Trump Is Bullish for Commodities.
Hecht points to four key reasons he thinks we will see higher highs and higher lows with commodities (including copper):
- The dollar and the Fed
- A different approach to trade
- A tough line against adversaries
- The potential for infrastructure rebuilding, eventually
Right on cue, the dollar dipped this morning. As Hecht says in his article, we still have 3+ years to see what impact President Trump will have, but it is a topic we will follow.
Looking Ahead
Upcoming industry conferences are also fueling positive speculation for copper. LME Week kicks off in London next week while the annual Cesco Asia Copper Week in Shanghai is scheduled for the end of November. We will keep an ear to the ground on both events and provide any stories impacting the price of copper.
Tagged with China, copper, President Trump, tED