RE:RE:How Can It Be? Copper is <mostly> subject to normal market forces of supply and demand, with one major exception - China's stockpile. Whenever a nation (or group of nations) decides to take a strategic position in a commodity, it begins to cause distortions in the way the commodity trades on otherwise open markets. China has repeatedly said it will intervene in the copper market when trading becomes disorderly, which is their word for going up in price too quickly. Strategic positions are not used to make profits in the market; they are used to change the momentum when trends run counter to their long term objectives. So events that, on the surface, don't make sense - like selling huge futures contracts at a loss, as LME or Shanghai exchange inventories shrink - are done to prevent the disorderly market action they dislike. They are far more concerned with shocks to their nation's input costs than they are with losing some money in the futures market. You can exert a lot of leverage - in the short term - on the price of copper, with carefully placed options or short selling.