Copper Reprices Fast As Shanghai Rally Forces London Catch-Up

Key Points

• Copper hit records as Shanghai’s late-week surge forced London to reprice in thin liquidity.
• Tight feedstock signals in China and tariff-driven distortions in U.S. pricing kept supply fears front and center.
• Charts suggest a hot uptrend cooling, not breaking, with consolidation risk rising into year-end.

After a holiday-thinned week, copper snapped benchmarks back into line. Shanghai rallied while London lagged, and the gap closed fast.

On Capital.com’s copper CFD, the market was 5.7619 per pound at 08:07 UTC, about 12,703 per tonne. In London, LME three-month copper was up 5.86% to 12,875 per tonne early in the session after touching a record 12,960.

The tape showed 12,445 open, 12,960 high and 12,445 low, with 27,651 lots traded. In China, the most-active SHFE contract rose 3.43% to 101,480 yuan per tonne after an all-time high of 102,660 yuan, about $14,600–$14,700.

Last week set the stage: Shanghai copper gained 5.81%, while London rose 1.93%. Monday became the convergence day.

Copper Rally Faces Cooling Technicals

Fundamentals stayed supportive. Major Chinese smelters avoided publishing first-quarter concentrate processing-fee guidance, a sign that feedstock remains scarce.

Beijing also signaled tighter oversight of new copper and alumina projects for 2026–2030, a heavy hand that can delay new supply. Another driver sits across the Atlantic.

Tariff uncertainty has kept COMEX pricing “special,” widening the premium to the LME and pulling inventories into U.S. warehouses. That shift tightens availability elsewhere and amplifies swings. Rate-cut expectations and a softer-dollar tone added a tailwind.

Investor products echoed the tone. The U.S. copper ETF CPER showed positive net creations into late December: about $52 million of net inflows over one month and roughly $129 million over three months, based on the latest published snapshot as of Dec. 24.

Technically, the rally is cooling. On the four-hour chart, RSI fell from around 70 to about 59 and the MACD histogram shrank.

The daily chart still leans bullish, with RSI in the high-60s and MACD positive. Nearby resistance sits around 5.81 per pound, with support in the mid-5.70s, then the low-5.60s.

Marex’s Alastair Munro has warned of choppy, volatile trading into year-end. Commerzbank, watching copper push beyond 12,000, cautioned that the “air is getting thinner.”

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