Copper Slips to $6.24 as AI Selloff and Fed Bets Hit Futures

Futures Selloff Drives Copper Lower

Three-month copper futures on the London Metal Exchange slid to $13,515 a ton on Thursday, the weakest reading since July, and an early rebound on Friday faded before it could stick. The metal now sits roughly 9% below September's record of $14,875. The pressure is coming from financial desks rather than from any surplus of metal. Copper has been trading as a proxy for AI infrastructure, and the latest technology selloff dragged it lower with it. Word that Nvidia chief executive Jensen Huang is stepping down added a further layer of doubt over data-centre spending. “Every time AI takes a hit, copper demand and prices come under pressure too,” said Tom Price, analyst at Panmure Liberum. Monetary policy has compounded the move. A hotter-than-expected US inflation print revived bets on rate increases, and Federal Reserve officials have not ruled out a 50-basis-point hike at the December 8–9 meeting. A firmer dollar has pushed model-driven funds to sell. Deutsche Bank, meanwhile, puts lower odds on US tariffs for refined copper, which is unwinding the trade that had pulled metal into the United States. The technical damage is visible even where the selling is on paper. Copper lost its rising support trend line in late October, and the same line turned into resistance when price retested it on October 30. Thursday's close took the metal below its 200-day moving average for the first time since this rally began, the same line that had held the March 23 swing low. The breakdown also removed the 0.382 Fibonacci retracement at $6.31. In per-pound terms the price sits near $6.21, about 10.7% below the September high, and has printed its first lower low in months. Below the market, the 0.5 Fibonacci level at $6.11 is the next reference, with the 0.618 retracement at $5.91 aligned with long-term support about 4.8% lower. The daily RSI sits near 35 and falling, so the metal is not yet oversold, and volume has eased since the November 4 and 9 selloffs even as price keeps grinding lower.

Shanghai Stocks Fall 24% in a Week

China's physical market is moving the other way. Warehouse stocks registered on the Shanghai Futures Exchange dropped 24% in a single week to 33,848 tons, the lowest level in almost three years and less than one day of Chinese consumption. The Yangshan premium, the surcharge Chinese importers pay over the London benchmark, set a record $240 a ton on Thursday. Goldman Sachs strategist Jimmy McGeoch described the physical market as “tight as a drum,” a view relayed by Robert Ivanhoe, who pointed to record-low smelter processing fees, production cuts at Chinese smelters and new grid tenders from the country's major network operators. Ivanhoe warned that Chinese inventories could be depleted by the end of the year. Processing fees are the standard distress signal in the smelting chain: they pay smelters to convert concentrate into refined metal, and their collapse points to a shortage of concentrate that has fed the production cuts. That gap between a scarce physical market and a falling paper price defines the setup. Daniel Ghali at Deutsche Bank put the asymmetry plainly: bears on copper need a recessionary spiral to justify their trade, while bulls need only the status quo to hold. Nothing in the warehouse data so far supports the recession case. Grid tenders are a direct demand channel, since they convert state investment into cable and wiring orders that consume refined metal. A squeeze this sharp tends to show up in import premiums before it reaches exchange prices, and the record Yangshan print suggests it already has. The Federal Reserve's December 8–9 decision and China's import premiums will indicate which side wins: the paper market pricing a slowdown, or the physical market running out of metal.

COINOTAG data puts the live price of copper at $6.24, down 0.18% over the past 24 hours after a session between $6.23 and $6.35. Our composite scoring places the strongest support directly beneath the market at $6.20, rated 87 out of 100, while the $6.35 resistance above carries a 96 out of 100 score and caps any rebound attempt. The daily read is a downtrend with a bearish MACD signal and an RSI of 36.6, right where the chart work above says the metal is not yet oversold. A sustained break under $6.20 would open the path to the next scored support at $5.98; a reclaim of $6.35 would argue the paper selloff has run its course.