Copper

peter2 said:

Copper, gold, silver and all other metals are being hammered (Smithy pun) again

Click to expand...

Copper prices are about 3% higher today on a short-covering but it's been a rough ride from $4.60 in early June to $3.20 today

Click to expand...

peter2 said:

Copper, gold, silver and all other metals are being hammered (Smithy pun) again today.

Click to expand...

Dona Ferentes said:

though, short term, its forging ahead

Click to expand...

Dona Ferentes said:

Sure, it's beaten up.

Will it last?

Click to expand...

peter2 said:

Copper, gold, silver and all other metals are being hammered (Smithy pun) again today.
DXY surging higher. There's no bottom in sight yet.

Click to expand...

JohnDe said:

There's too much copper around, even with the world going electric, our miners have no issues finding it.

Click to expand...

Are We Going to Run Out of Copper?

It Is Highly Improbable!
Since 1960, there has always been, on average, 38 years of reserves, and significantly greater amounts of known resources (USGS data). In addition, recycling, innovation and mining exploration continue to contribute to the long-term availability of copper.

Despite increased demand for copper produced from ore in recent years, increases in reserves have grown, and there is more identified copper available to the world than at any other time in history.

In the period 2010-2020, 207 million tonnes of copper have been mined. In that same period however, reserves have grown by
240 million tonnes to 870,000 million tonnnes copper . This reflects additional exploration, technological advances and the evolving economics of mining.

Technology has a key role to play in addressing many of the challenges faced by new copper production. Known and as yet unknown innovations will ensure new mine production continues to provide vital copper supplies.

In addition copper recycling plays an important role in copper availability since today’s primary copper is tomorrow’s recycled material. Unlike other commodities such as energy or food, copper is not “consumed”. Copper is one of the few raw materials which can be recycled repeatedly without any loss of performance, and key stakeholders such as policy-makers, scrap collectors, copper producers and recyclers must all focus on ensuring that yesterday’s metal is recycled and re-used.

Long Term Availability of Copper

Long Term Availability of CopperCopper Reserves and ResourcesTypically, the future availability of minerals is based on the concept of reserves and resources. Reserves are deposits that have been discovered, evaluated and assessed to be economically profitable to mine. Resources are far bigger...

icsg.org

Click to expand...

greggles said:

My thesis is increasing demand will pull the copper price up by its bootstraps.

Click to expand...

moXJO said:

Ok can't quote John's post for some reason.

But that's an interesting take. Everywhere else is pushing that copper is going to be scarce. Was watching a video of some big hedgefunds pushing the "scarcity" line as well.

Click to expand...

moXJO said:

Ok can't quote John's post for some reason.

But that's an interesting take. Everywhere else is pushing that copper is going to be scarce. Was watching a video of some big hedgefunds pushing the "scarcity" line as well.

Click to expand...

greggles said:

I don't think anyone is denying that there is plenty of copper under the ground. However, until it is mined and processed it is effectively useless. Copper supply means copper that is ready for sale. It takes a long time and a lot of money to get copper out of the ground and the lower the copper price is the less copper will be mined because the economics of doing so become less favourable.

My thesis is increasing demand will pull the copper price up by its bootstraps. Companies with lower cost copper operations will do extremely well. But demand won't go away and supply will have trouble keeping up. As a result those looking to buy copper will have to pay more.

Click to expand...

Copper is a fairly common element, with an estimated concentration of 50–70 ppm (0.005–0.007 percent) in earth's crust (1 kg of copper per 15–20 tons of crustal rock).

Julian Simon was a senior fellow at the Cato Institute and a professor of business and economics. In his book The Ultimate Resource 2 (first printed in 1981 and reprinted in 1998), he extensively criticizes the notion of "peak resources", and uses copper as one example. He argues that, even though "peak copper" has been a persistent scare since the early 20th century, "known reserves" grew at a rate that outpaced demand, and the price of copper was not rising but falling over the long run. For example, even though world production of copper in 1950 was only one-eighth of what it was in early-2000s, known reserves were also much lower at the time – around 100 million metric tons – making it appear that the world would run out of copper in 40 to 50 years at most.

Simon's own explanation for this development is that the very notion of known reserves is deeply flawed,[39] as it does not take into account changes in mining profitability. As richer mines are exhausted, developers turn their attention to poorer sources of the element and eventually develop cheap methods of extracting it, raising known reserves. Thus, for example, copper was so abundant 5000 years ago, occurring in pure form as well as in highly concentrated copper ores, that prehistoric peoples were able to collect and process it with very basic technology. As of the early 21st century, copper is commonly mined from ores that contain 0.3% to 0.6% copper by weight. Yet, despite the material being far less widespread, the cost of, for example, a copper pot was vastly lower in the late 20th century than 5000 years ago.

Click to expand...

JohnDe said:

The facts show that mining has been keeping up with demand for decades. Copper supplies is not an issue, people artificially keeping prices high by storing it has been the issue in the past.

As I've mentioned before, I've been watching copper for decades and only those in the know get rich from it.

Click to expand...

greggles said:

Well, supply and demand have a way of finding an equilibrium, and that equilibrium is price. When there is more demand for copper than there is copper being mined, the price increase and vice versa.

The below 45 year copper price chart shows the price swings that illustrate how the imbalances between supply and demand have played out.

If there is some other factor at work other than supply, demand, inflation and global macroeconomics then feel free to elaborate further.


View attachment 144399

Click to expand...