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Copper Price Surges Toward Near Record High

One week ago, tED magazine told you the price of copper dipped to $4.05 a pound.

That’s not the case any more.

As of Friday morning, October 15, the price is nearing the record high of $4.84 a pound, briefly touching $4.78 a pound a few hours ago.

What happened?

Almost immediately after tED magazine hit “post” for last week’s copper story, the price started its seven-day climb.

By Monday morning, October 11, copper’s price had jumped to $4.36 a pound, at one point reaching a high of $4.38 during trading. Labor issues at one of South America’s largest mines, plus ongoing economic issues in China are two reasons for the price spike.

After a brief dip in the price on Tuesday, October 12, the second spike of the week started on Wednesday, October 13. After reaching a high of $4.52, the price settled at $4.51 for the day, a 4% jump. At that point, we had reached a 50-day high for copper prices. Analysts quoted on Wednesday believed economic growth around the world was slowing, and as a result, copper prices would begin to dip. Citigroup even predicted a 10% price drop for copper.

That didn’t happen over the next 48 hours.

As energy shortages continued, supply remained low, and the Biden Administration announced a new initiative for wind farms on both coasts, copper price rose even higher, closing at $4.63 on October 14, and surging again on Friday morning, where as of this writing, it sits at $4.75 a pound, which is 70 cents higher than it was just 10 days ago. Offshore wind farms require an immense amount of copper, and with supplies currently low, the price jumped following the announcement. In fact, one analyst now believes copper will reach a 521,000 metric tonne deficit by the end of the year, so prices could remain high during the fourth quarter.

Looking back to give you some reference on copper pricing, we are still seeing significant dips and increases over the past 60 days, with the price briefly dipping below $4 for a few hours, all the way to today’s current price of $4.77.

And when compared to the price from a year ago, we were paying just slightly above $3 a pound in October of 2020, meaning we are seeing a nearly $2 increase per pound today.