Copper slipped in New York on Tuesday, giving back an advance in London, as a global bond selloff and a firmer dollar cut into a rally that has carried the metal to within touching distance of record highs.
Comex copper for December delivery, which took over this week as the most-active contract, fell 1.3% to $6.6020 a pound (about $14,555 a tonne) by late morning in New York, after trading as high as $6.7420 earlier in the session. The September contract touched an all-time high of $6.7775 last Wednesday.
In London, three-month copper came within $2.50 of its own record last week, touching $14,525 a tonne against the all-time intraday peak of $14,527.50 set on January 29. LME inventories have fallen for four straight sessions, to 234,275 tonnes.
Traders have spent the year shipping copper into the United States ahead of a 15% duty on refined imports due in January 2027, rising to 30% in 2028, a trade that has dominated the paper market and drained warehouses everywhere else. Comex stockpiles reached about 688,000 tonnes on August 31, almost three times the LME total, according to Bloomberg.
CRU projected a 639,000-tonne global surplus for 2026 but now regards the market as at best balanced. “If imports keep coming in as they have been, then it’s going to look like a deficit market in reality,” principal copper analyst Robert Edwards told Reuters last week.
Chile’s missing tonnes
Chile produced 403,424 tonnes of copper in July, down 9.4% from a year earlier and 9.8% below June, the weakest July for the world’s biggest producer since 2011. The national statistics agency blamed weather in the north of the country that hindered normal production, along with maintenance at major sites.
The damage showed up in the wider economy on Tuesday. Chile’s Imacec activity index, a proxy for GDP, fell 1.5% in July from a year earlier against expectations for 0.4% growth, with mining down 9.3%. The 1.7% monthly drop was the steepest since 2022. “These results were partly affected by weather conditions that disrupted the normal operation of production facilities,” the central bank said.
The storms, arriving as El Niño intensifies, shut Antofagasta’s Los Pelambres and Lundin Mining’s Caserones. Antofagasta cut 2026 guidance to between 625,000 and 655,000 tonnes from 650,000 to 700,000 alongside first-half results on August 13, and Lundin trimmed Caserones to 120,000 to 130,000 tonnes from 130,000 to 140,000 six days later, after a second storm brought down a transmission tower.
Monster month for equities
Copper producers fell with the metal on Tuesday, though the month behind them looks very different. Freeport-McMoRan, down 2.6% to $73.76 on Tuesday, has still gained 17.8% over the past month, the best of the majors, ahead of First Quantum’s 15.6% and Ivanhoe Mines’ 15.3%. Southern Copper is up 13.3% over the month, Teck Resources 11.4%, Glencore 10.7% and BHP 10.5%.
The two producers that cut Chilean guidance are the laggards. Antofagasta, ahead 4.9% over the month, dropped 5.1% on Tuesday, the worst performer in the group, while Lundin Mining has managed just 2.9% and fell 3.8% in Toronto.
Teck has a second story running. Anglo American aims to close its $53 billion merger with the Canadian miner as soon as next month, pending Chinese approval, and Glencore’s 44% stake in Collahuasi stands between the enlarged company and the $1.4 billion in annual earnings that Anglo believes it can unlock by linking that mine to Teck’s Quebrada Blanca.
Sibanye-Stillwater, down 0.8%, used first-half results on Tuesday to commit to the $340 million Mt Lyell copper-gold mine in Tasmania, targeting first ore in 2029 and 26,000 tonnes of copper a year over a 23-year life.
Comex copper is up about 15% in 2026 and 44% over the past year.
