Copper’s New-Year Breakout Tests $5.90 as Inventories and Arbitrage Drive Prices
Key Points
- U.S. copper led a jump across COMEX, LME, and Shanghai benchmarks.
- Tight deliverable supply and shifting flows are driving the move.
- Charts show strong momentum into $5.92–$5.93 resistance.
Copper opened higher. Early trading put COMEX around $5.87–$5.89 a pound after a $5.6993–$5.9040 range, with about 16,772 contracts on the tape. A 07:43–07:44 UTC TradingView snapshot showed a copper CFD at $5.89022–$5.89097.
LME three-month copper was near $12,873.5 a tonne, trading $12,531–$12,905.5 on volume of 11,867. In China, the front SHFE contract (CU2601) printed 101,190 yuan a tonne on 26,197 lots—about $14,500 a tonne using USD/CNY near 6.97845—keeping the China-versus-LME gap in view.
The background was hardly perfect, and markets showed little patience for policy fixes that do not add supply. The dollar strengthened into a heavy U.S. data week, and geopolitical tension boosted safe-haven metals.
Copper rose anyway, keeping focus on the physical market: tariff uncertainty and a persistent CME premium have encouraged flows toward the United States, while heavy LME stock cancellations for load-out have tightened the nearby picture.
Copper rally looks crowded after 2025 surge
After an outsized 2025 run, the story is less “global growth” than “market fracture.” Electrification, grid upgrades, and data centers underpin demand, and the International Copper Study Group has flagged a shift toward refined deficit; some banks still see 2026 as high but range-bound.
Flows show investors leaning in—selectively. COPX, a copper-miners ETF, logged about $250 million of net inflows over five days.
JJC showed net outflows of about $17.27 million over one month and $43.66 million over one year; CPER reported roughly $231 million of one-year inflows and about $456 million in assets.
Public market-maker commentary was limited, but the price action itself spoke: thin year-turn liquidity amplified each push.
The latest 4-hour bar in your chart showed a mild -0.56% dip even as trend signals stayed positive. Technically, momentum is firm but crowded.
On the 4-hour chart, RSI was near 64 and the MACD histogram positive (~+0.01496) despite a small pullback; the daily RSI sat in the upper-60s with a positive histogram (~+0.02267). The immediate test is $5.92–$5.93. If it fails, supports sit near $5.81–$5.75, then $5.62 and $5.38.
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