Copper

Following two consecutive commodity downgrades which killed crude and all commodities, which led many to wonder just how many pictures of Lloyd Blankfein at Scores does Bill Dudley have locked up in his office, the bank, whose primary M.O. is to push inflation, has gone for one more deflationary report, this time cutting the last man, er doctor, standing: copper. From Goldman: "We are pushing out our $11,000/mt target to 2Q2012 and lowering our 2011 year-end copper price target to $9,800/mt from $11,000/mt. Accordingly, we recently closed our long December 2011 copper trade recommendation – first opened on October 4, 2010 – for a gain of $1,872/mt. We are also raising our 3-month forecast to $9,300/mt, and 6-month forecast to $9,600/mt." And with this we can now scratch Scores, and move on to The Bunny Ranch. Incidentally, this means gold and silver are next. You have been warned.

Wondering what just took the carpet from under the commodity complex? Heeeeeere's Goldman.

Two days ago we pointed out the dramatic change in the ratio of copper to gold, which moved at the highest rate of change since June of 2010. Today, the rate of change is even higher at 4.3%. And with copper starting to seriously take on water, a curious observation emerges: is the gold-copper ratio, which on an inverted basis was virtually a tick for tick correlation conjugate for the S&P, now simply a harbinger of where the stock market is headed. All else equal, once the Chinese exuberance dynamics which appear to have stalled out in copper, move to equities (which as Finisair demonstrated yesterday is only a matter of time) we believe, as the attached chart shows, that the fair value of the stock market is about 120 points lower. Since this is a relative comparison, those who do not wish to trade a single series, can put on a pair trade of short the Gold/Copper ratio (predicting it will decline from the current 3.4 - it is shown inverted on the chart below) and short the S&P in expectation of a compression.

As Credit Suisse points out, today the Gold/Copper ratio is up by over 4% to 3.32, which happens to be the biggest one day move since June 29, and confirms that not only the copper run may be over, but that derisking and the flight to safety trade is truly back on. Although one hardly needed to see this chart to come to that conclusion: even as the market continues to expect an announcement from Bernanke that CTRL-P Central (f/k/a the Marriner Eccles building) will start printing crude any minute, the wait may end up being quite protracted. And while gold has not been touched yet, and in fact continues to trade at all time highs, we wish to repeat our warning that should the crunch in the S&P continue (even if it is modest by historic amounts), it is very likely we may see liquidations in HF precious metals holdings considering the HF margin debt position is at virtually all time highs, meaning the toxic spiral of plunging prices and broad deleveraging in advance of margin calls, will lead to a sell off in anything and everything that is not nailed down.

As suggested last night, the escalation in Egypt, together with more riot news out of Yemen, and fear that tomorrow's Syrian "Days of Rage" will live up to their name, Brent Crude has pushed to the $103 psychological barrier (even as the Brent-WTI spread continue to be about $10, much as we speculated previously would be the case for a while). And speaking of psychological barriers, copper just passed a key one after it moved to a record north of $10,000/tonne for the first time "as investors bet that supply shortages and buoyant demand growth this year would keep fuelling a rally."

According to PhysOrg.com, two Italian scientists from the University of Bologna have taken on one of physics' historically most discredited concepts, cold fusion, and have actually succeeded in creating a sustainable reaction. Aside from the major implications of the energy market should this be validated and recreated (an issue that buried the original Cold Fusion discovery by Stanley Pons and Martin Fleishmann), one of the more economically important side effects of this purported rediscovery is that one of the byproducts of the reaction is none other than recently uber-bubbleicious copper. One wonders what the implications for the copper supply and demand curves (and equilibrium price) would be should the reaction documented by Andrea Rossi and Sergio Focardi be proven to not be a hoax. Is modern day alchemy the only thing that can dethrone copper from its historic price highs?

Should I jump on to a moving train? Half of global demand for the red metal is now coming from hedge funds. Friends with warehouses stashed around the country with copper ingots stacked to the ceiling. Next stop: $6 a pound? (CU), (JJC), (ECH), (FCX).

Simon Hunt, founder of Brook Hunt, puts a dent in the dreams of all those who expect to see a continuing surge in copper prices throughout 2011 and further.  The copper specialist, who has since left the firm he founded and is now head of Simon Hunt Strategic Services which specialises in copper, global economics and China, is arguably one of the premier experts on the topic of copper. It therefore behooves the copper bulls to pay attention to his latest interim note which contains "our principal reasons why copper
prices this year won?t live up to the hopes of so many bulls." And his long-term vision is about as scary as they get: "Peak prices
for 2011  will be experienced in the first quarter of the year, if they
have not already been seen. Prices will then fall until around the start
of the fourth quarter, hitting a low of some $5500. Recovery will
follow rising parabolically in 2012 to some $14,000 by the end of next
year.  This will signal the end of the gaming of copper prices. A return to
global recession, deflation and the destruction of large end uses of
copper will see prices crashing to levels long since forgotten - to
under $1500 by 2016. It will be at that point that the real
restructuring of the industry will take place.  Future trend growth
rates for world refined copper consumption will be below 2% a year
implying that marginal producers will be closed down. It  is not a
shortage of supply that will shape the future of copper but a shortage
of required material for furnaces." Full note attached.

If you think Gold's 30% gain last year is impressive, one base metal--Copper--even outshined the precious metal by rallying 33% on the year. After a short cover rally in Dec., looking ahead into 2011, the price direction of copper will likely still hinge on supply, and mostly China demand, but it also depends on a couple of new market factors emerged just within the last year or so.

When a week ago we reported that JP Morgan has denied it owned more than 90% of the copper positions on the LME, we suggested that this could very well mean that Blythe Master's firm could just as easily control 89.999% of the copper and still not misrepresent the truth per that non-commital press release. Turns out our unbridled cynicism was spot on as usual. The Wall Street Journal has just reported that in the copper market "a single trader has reported it owns 80% to 90% of the copper
sitting in London Metal Exchange warehouses, equal to about half of the
world's exchange-registered copper stockpile and worth about $3 billion." Oh and yes, while JP Morgan technically is not singled out, we will be delighted to issue a retraction the second JP Morgan approaches us with a refutation that it is not the trader in question. And while we are at it, we also will repeat our claim that it was indeed JP Morgan that reduced its massive silver position, as per the recent FT article: as above we will immediately issue a retraction and apologize should JPM's legal department contact us that we are wrong on this. Somehow we don't think that will be an issue. And so it is once again made clear that the biggest market manipulating cartel in the world is not only JPM's commodity trading operation, but the "regulators" at the CFTC, who are doing all they can do to delay implementing rules on position limit- a stalling tactic whose sole purpose is to make the life of Jamie Dimon as comfortable as possible while he corners the copper market (and offloads his PM shorts to some "foreign bank"), even if that means the complete collapse in faith in the commodity market. Presumably, this means that Mr. Gensler has received an outsized Christmas gift to assuage his conscience. As for the commodity market, well, just look at what has happened to the stock market now that everyone knows it is nothing but a house of cards scam where a few robots front run each other. We are confident to quite confident tomorrow's ICI report will confirm that 33rd consecutive outflow from domestic equity funds. It is a pity that the same fate will now happen to the commodities market, as everyone tells Gensler to shove his corrupt market, and moves to physical. Frankly, it couldn't happen to a nicer group of so-called regulators.

As Zero Hedge had been claiming for about two weeks now, with volatility in stocks virtually gone due to the fact that nobody trades a market that is nothing more than a policy tool, those chasing vol have had to shift elsewhere, namely FX (the vertigo-inducing EURUSD is one example) and, surprisingly, treasuries. As we speculated, the fact that the world's most "liquid" market can experience 6 sigma shifts in the 2s5s10s butterfly in the span of days (more on that later), is indicative of something very bad developing under the surface. We have a feeling that should stocks continue to be shunned as they have been, and as the MOVE index continues to creep higher, the likelihood of some major wipe out is imminent. It seems that the CME has finally agreed with our line of thinking. Late last night, the CME hiked its margin requirements across pretty much all asset classes. The different options and futures involved in this drastic action were everything from natty, to copper (cough Blythe cough), to palladium, to silver. But most notably the CME both new initial and new maintenance margins on 5,7, 10 and 30 Year IR Swaps, 5,7, 10 and 30 Year Bond Futs, and, of all thing, the 30 Day Fed Fund Futures. If it has gotten so bad that the exchange has to regulate the vol in Fed Funds (the indicator of future inflation), then certainly one or more wheels are about to fall off. As to whether this action will have its typical impact of warding of shorting is unclear. We believe it will merely make fails to delivery increase substantially.

As we reported last weekend, in addition to the now indirect admission from JP Morgan (and to all those who are expecting an official 8K from the firm which opens it up to market manipulation litigation, we can only hope they manage to grow out of their childish naivete soon) that it did in fact have a major silver short position, it has been recently speculated that JPM's monopolistic tentacles have reached out to the copper market, of which JPM is now rumored to control 50% to 80%. Today, we get an official non-admission admission from JP Morgan that it does not in fact own over 90% of the silver market. Well, that's not really useful, as that "admission" says nothing about owning up to a whopping 89.9% of the copper market: a stake which would make JPM the biggest one-man cartel in the history of the industrial metal. Per Reuters: "U.S. investment bank
JPMorgan said it does not hold more than 90 percent of copper stock
warrants in London Metal Exchange warehouses, but declined on Tuesday to
comment on whether it had a smaller position." It also appears that per the LME the position is now no longer "only" 50-80 but has grown to 90%: "A single holder, recently controlling 50-80
percent of copper stocks and cash contracts in London Metal Exchange
warehouses, appears to have raised the position to above 90 percent,
latest data from the world's biggest metals market showed." And for those who wonder why one entity controlling the entire market is not good here is the explanation: "some say it is one of the reasons why copper hit a record high of $9,267.50 a tone on Tuesday." Oddly enough, JP Morgan did comment on the firm's holdings in copper, which it so far has refused to do vis-a-vis its silver position: "A spokesman for JPMorgan, asked by Reuters to
comment on the market talk, said the company did not hold more than 90
percent but declined to comment further." And this is the environment in which the CFTC still obstinately refuses to impose position limits lest it derail the massive profit scheme that one-time or recurring monopoly holdings represent for the big banks.

Copper is often called Dr Copper as the metal is considered a bell-weather for the world economy due to its close correlation to economic growth (used by many industries, copper typically rallies when the world economy is growing)

I don’t know if you have noticed what I have, but lately it appears that people are using Copper as a poor mans currency. I started to notice during the crash of 2008, that copper was being sold in a .999 pure bullion. The photo attached is for a single troy oz of “Fine Copper”. The list price for this copper, as is, was 12 dollars. Think about that for a moment.

Not content with holding the biggest paper short position in silver, JP Morgan is now intent on cornering the copper market, as the monopolist firm stretches its FRBNY-facilitated muscles in an attempt to stem the massive losses incurred via its silver short. As the Telegraph reports, following up on a story of a "rogue" purchaser who bought up $1.5 billion in copper on the LME, "the American investment bank JP Morgan is the mystery trader that grabbed more than half the copper on the London Metal Exchange." This is a huge copper purchase, and represents between 50% and 80% of the 350,000 tonnes in reserves, confirming that JPM is now the dominant manipulator in yet another commodity market. The purchase also pushed the price for immediate delivery to $8,700, the highest since October 2008. It is unclear how China, which is the biggest non-speculative end user, will react to this development, nor whether the CFTC will (ever) take any action against such blatant market manipulation. One thing is certain: the LME will do absolutely nothing: "Diarmuid O'Hegarty, head of compliance, said: "The LME has noted recent
comments about the current circumstances in the copper market. Such
circumstances are not unusual and the exchange is exercising its well
established procedures for maintaining an orderly market." He added that large trades were not a cause for concern because the market's
rules dictate that holders have to lend out a proportion of their stock to
ensure a smooth supply of the metal." And who would possibly assume that JPM may not follow the rules...