Copper price’s red-hot run as it heads for a decade-long high

Copper has gained 26% so far this year and this week hit $9,758 a tonne, its highest level since the summer of 2011. Copper got a big boost last year from Chinese infrastructure building. Now the US is following suit, says Myra Saefong for MarketWatch. Joe Biden’s $2.3trn infrastructure package and green energy plans will require massive quantities of copper wiring.

The virus also accelerated the advent of the digital economy, says Rob Haworth of U.S. Bank Wealth Management. “Semiconductors, data centres and cellular towers” all need copper. Supply is not rising fast enough to meet demand. Miners have underinvested in new capacity in recent years and developing new mines is a lengthy process.

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Analysts at Goldman Sachs recently declared copper to be “the new oil”. The bank thinks that mass electrification could see demand for the metal rise by “up to 900%” come 2030, depending upon how fast green technologies are adopted. Commodities trader Trafigura thinks the metal could trade as high as $15,000 a tonne over the coming decade.

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Alex is an investment writer who has been contributing to MoneyWeek since 2015. He has been the magazine’s markets editor since 2019.

Alex has a passion for demystifying the often arcane world of finance for a general readership. While financial media tends to focus compulsively on the latest trend, the best opportunities can lie forgotten elsewhere.

He is especially interested in European equities – where his fluent French helps him to cover the continent’s largest bourse – and emerging markets, where his experience living in Beijing, and conversational Chinese, prove useful.

Hailing from Leeds, he studied Philosophy, Politics and Economics at the University of Oxford. He also holds a Master of Public Health from the University of Manchester.