Copper prices rebounded on Monday, recovering part of last week’s steep losses as risk appetite steadied, the dollar slipped and tight physical supply in China came back into focus.
Comex copper for December delivery, the most active contract in New York, was trading at $6.3550 a pound ($14,010 a tonne) late morning in New York, up 1.9% on the day and roughly 13% higher so far in 2026.
On the London Metal Exchange, three-month copper rose 0.9% to $13,890 a tonne by mid-afternoon in London, having lost 2.7% last week in its steepest weekly decline since March. In Shanghai the most-traded contract gained 0.5% to 107,430 yuan ($16,096) a tonne.
China squeeze
“Copper is recovering as risk sentiment stabilises and tight physical supply in China returns to focus,” ING commodities strategist Ewa Manthey told Reuters, adding that the rise in spot premiums shows metal remains difficult to secure.
The Yangshan copper premium, which reflects demand for metal imported into the top consumer, rose to a record $230 a tonne on Monday. Copper stocks in Shanghai Futures Exchange-monitored warehouses fell more than 24% last week to 33,848 tonnes, the lowest in almost three years, according to John Gross of The Copper Journal. That would cover China’s copper consumption for less than a day.
Bloomberg reports the Singapore-based trader Trafigura, one of the biggest in the copper market, has over the past two weeks approached several producers and traders in Asia seeking to buy large volumes over November and December, and has been willing to outbid rivals to secure cargoes.
Spot premiums in Shanghai have tripled over the past two weeks to a record 2,615 yuan ($392) a tonne, according to Shanghai Metals Market, while premiums for imported copper tracked by Fastmarkets have jumped more than 40% to $195–210 a tonne, the highest in data going back to 2017. On the SHFE, the spread between December and January contracts blew out to more than 1,200 yuan a tonne late on Friday, the widest backwardation since 2005.
Chinese smelters are struggling to source concentrate and scrap, and a crackdown on illegal mining in the Democratic Republic of Congo – China’s biggest source of refined copper – in which the government seized more than 500 trucks and several thousand tonnes of copper and cobalt, threatens to crimp supplies further.
“One of the main drivers for the tightness is the slowdown in refined production growth, which reflects the fact that smelters have been struggling for feedstock,” Morgan Stanley metals strategist Amy Gower told Bloomberg. “The demand indicators are fairly lackluster, so it does point to supply issues being the cause of the tightness in the Chinese market.”
Ship to shore
Comex depots hold 732,943 tonnes, more than double a year ago, after two years in which miners and traders prioritised shipments to the US ahead of threatened import tariffs.
On paper, the surge in Shanghai premiums and spreads is now large enough to cover the cost of shipping copper from the US back to China. The hindrance, people familiar with the trade told Bloomberg, is that those cargoes would be worth far more in the US if tariffs are eventually imposed.
“This is starting to become more of a question, but for it to happen I think you’d need tariffs to be definitively ruled out,” Gower said. “Our base case is that the US material will be quite sticky and will only get drawn down through under-importing.”
Temporary gains?
Monday’s bounce may not hold. “Today’s move does not necessarily mark the end of the correction,” ING’s Manthey said. “Prices remain vulnerable to further weakness if broader market sentiment deteriorates again.”
A Democratic sweep in last week’s US midterm elections has reduced the prospects for the Trump administration’s planned tariffs on refined copper and raised the odds of tighter restrictions on data centres, threatening both the AI-related demand and the tariff-driven stockpiling that have supported prices this year. TD Securities said on Friday that copper faces a further slide as the result weakens expectations for import tariffs.
Last week also offered a partial answer to the question of how much of copper’s 2026 rally rests on AI hype rather than fundamentals, Gross says: the metal fell in lockstep with tech stocks. The physical demand story has not changed – US construction spending on data centres hit a record annualized $96.5 billion in September, according to The Copper Journal – but a “not in my backyard” contingent emboldened by the election could see that spending stall too.
Citi struck a similar note on Monday: “While low visible inventories and elevated geopolitical risks should continue to provide downside support in the near-term, the outlook for next year remains challenged by Indonesian-led supply growth and a muted demand environment.”
Miners rebound
Copper producers rallied with the metal on Monday. Freeport-McMoRan climbed 5.8% in early afternoon trade in New York, lifting its market value to $90.2 billion, less than a week after its board approved a $4.5 billion expansion of the Bagdad mine in Arizona that would more than double the operation’s copper output to over 400 million pounds a year from mid-2030 and make it the second-largest copper mine in the US.
Southern Copper added 6.0% to $151.3 billion and Teck Resources rose 5.9% to $31.4 billion. BHP gained 3.2% to $207.4 billion, Rio Tinto 3.0% to $147.8 billion and Glencore 5.3% to $81.7 billion. Anglo American was up 6.2% and Antofagasta 6.7% in US trading, with Lundin Mining up 6.5% and First Quantum Minerals 5.2% in Toronto.
Ivanhoe Mines added 3.5%, but the Vancouver-based company is still down 47% this year after a second production downgrade at its Kamoa-Kakula complex in the Democratic Republic of Congo.
The bounce follows a brutal October. The MINING.COM TOP 50 ranking of the world’s most valuable miners lost $226 billion last month on top of September’s $264 billion decline, and is now $712 billion below its February peak.
In project news, Rio Tinto is injecting $144 million into Resolution Copper in Arizona after a land-swap court victory, a project JPMorgan says is central to its view that US copper output could more than double. In Chile, Codelco and Pucobre have cleared a key hurdle for an $870 million copper mine slated to begin construction in 2027, even as the state miner contends with an inflated output scandal that has grown to 42,100 tonnes.
(With files from Reuters and Bloomberg)
