Copper Market 2011 Deficit May Be as Much as 600,000 Tons, JPMorgan Says

[Joanne98]

The world refined copper market is expected to have a 500,000-metric-ton to 600,000-ton deficit in 2011, even with a significantly weaker demand scenario, according to JPMorgan Securities Ltd.

Disruptions last year seemed to have wiped out most of mine supply growth, metals strategist Michael Jansen told a conference in Shanghai. “As demand further recovers into 2011, supply-side issues will become more influential,” he said.

Copper for delivery in three months in London advanced to a record of $9,754 a metric ton on Jan. 4 after rising 30 percent last year as the improving global economy and rising investment demand for commodities prompted buying. The International Copper Study Group is expecting a 435,000-ton global deficit in the refined metal this year.

While current prices are sufficient to encourage brownfield and greenfield developments, longstanding issues, including capital availability, relative merit of projects, resource nationalism, and geotechnical issues, remain key impediments for supply increase, said Jansen.

http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2011-01-15/copper-market-2011-deficit-may-be-as-much-as-600-000-tons-jpmorgan-says.html

[Tunkamerica]

1. 4.42 a pound. Doesn't seem like enough to warrant ripping up air conditioning units

and people's wiring. A guy got electrocuted a few days ago trying to steal copper from a live wire with bolt cutters.

[Joanne98]

2. Yeah. I used to work with a girl who's brother ripped out all the copper plumbing

from his parents' rental unit. lol

[Uben]

3. When I was kid, copper sold for .20/lb

My granddad worked in the oilfield, and they used a lot of copper and brass fittings. They just discarded the old valves as they wore out and we would go out on the leases and pick them up and take them to the scrap yard to sell. It wasn't much, but helped a kid get christmas money, along with picking up pecans and selling them for .16/lb.

[Art_from_Ark]

7. I picked up walnuts

(don't remember how much I got for them, but it wasn't much) and Coke bottles for 2-5 cents each. It didn't even amount to Christmas money-- more like candy bar and pinball money (3 games for 25 cents).

[Uben]

11. OMG, I was a pinball addict!

Had a friend who had a paper route, but he didn't like to collect the money. So, I would do his collection runs, for a fee, of course. I could take a quarter and play pinball for hours!

It was cool being able to find pop bottles and sell em for 2 cents. Back then, candy bars were a nickel, pops were a dime, and half the candy aisle was filled with penny candies! We must be about the same age, I'm 56.

We had a little burger shack that sold hamburgers 5 for a dollar. We ate a lot of hamburgers!

[Art_from_Ark]

14. You must have been a "Pinball Wizard"

to be able to play on a quarter for hours. I never figured out how to whack a pinball machine just right to keep it from tilting. LOL

I remember the 10-cent bottled pop-- RC Cola, NuGrape, Orange Crush, Dr. Pepper (10 2 and 4), 7 Up. Pop machines came with bottle openers. With the older models, you had to open a glass door and turn the knob of the drink you wanted.

Some of the local mom-and-pop drive-ins offered hamburgers for 20-25 cents each. Mr. Quick came into town in 1970 and hung out a big banner advertising 19-cent hamburgers.

You're a little older than I am, but I'm old enough to remember JFK's funeral and The Beatles cartoon show.

[Uben]

15. Actually.....

...there was this one pinball machine in the lobby of a local cafeteria that was owned by a next door neighbor that I could always beat and win free games. I was as obsessed with playing it as some kids are at video games these days. Mom didn't care as long as she knew where I was. We didn't have cell phones, so I would borrow the phone in the cafeteria office to tell her where I was. An hour or so mowing a lawn would net you a quarter or fifty cents, and that was good for a soda pop and a few hours of pinball! Life was good!

[Art_from_Ark]

17. I wasn't attached to any specific pinball game

since they were frequently rotated after revenues started to decline, I guess (that is, after the pinball wizards figured out how to get the machines to give a steady stream of free games). I later got attached to one of the first generation of video games, a motorcycle game based on "Easy Rider" that played a loop of "Born To Be Wild". Two plays for a quarter, and I don't remember if a replay was possible. Soda pop was still a dime, as were "Slim Jims", so yeah, life was good!

I don't remember copper being 20 cents/lb, but I wasn't paying much attention to it back then. I first started paying attention to the gold price around 1967 or so when I learned that it was actually legal to hold most forms of gold. I was also interested in the silver price around that same time, because it had risen above $1.29/ounce meaning that the silver in the 90% silver coins that were still circulating back then was worth more than the face value. It wasn't long before the silver coins disappeared from sight.

[DCKit]

4. I wonder what the dollar amount of JP Morgan's copper contracts is...

and how much of the market they're currently controlling.

But they would never do that, would they? It would be immoral and unethical.

[Joanne98]

5. Good question

[CHIMO]

6. Perhaps/Maybe

The BDI (Baltic Dry Index) has taken out the April 2009 low. It will now test the Dec 2008 low.

[DCKit]

8. I remember a decade or so back...

I was trading penny stocks and actually making some money at it.

A teenager was arrested for buying stocks, then talking them up on the trading boards to raise the prices. He made a killing.

He was arrested, tried and forced to give back most of his "unlawful" gains.

Too bad his name wasn't "J.P. Morgan".

[Art_from_Ark]

9. A teenager was arrested for talking up stocks on a message board?

He must have been posing as a company insider to get arrested, since people try to talk their stocks up all the time on those boards.

[dixiegrrrrl]

10. 1.00 worth of 1909-1982 Lincoln Copper pennies = 2.88 melt value now.

Copper Price: $4.3623 / pound
Zinc Price: $1.1000 / pound

http://www.coinflation.com/coins/basemetal_coin_calculator.html

[upi402]

12. Construction is so dead, copper should be down

I remember a few years ago scrap metal of any sort was being gobbled up and shipped to China. Guys are still buying old clunker cars at auction a scrapping them.

[dixiegrrrrl]

13. Construction HERE is so dead.

I tell ya, the future money will be in buying up landfills, mark my words.

[upi402]

16. For methane or salvage?

:hi:

I have visions of Philippine pickers at landfills sometimes. But corporations will privatize collection sites so we don't get to it before Waste Management gets the recycle behind barbed wire.

Sustainable energy should be a magnet for huge investment, if this were a rational state.

[Statistical]

18. If someone invented a universal nano-disasembler, landfills would be very valuable.

A universal nano-dissembler would be an army of self replicating nano scaled robots that could break items down into their individual raw components at the atomic level.

If I invented that today I would get some venture capitalists to form a corporation to buy every landfill we could. They would be a treasure trove of resources. Trash in -> raw material out. The ROI% would be much higher than any mine due to the density of valuable material.

[Art_from_Ark]

19. The vast majority of junk in landfills is just that-- junk

Old newspapers and magazines, dirty diapers, old shoes, packages and packing materials. The vast majority of metal in landfills is steel, which is made from iron. The actual proportion of steel in a landfill is small, especially where municipalities have metal recycling programs. In contrast, high-grade iron ore from a mine can contain 65% or more iron.