London Metals Exchange Week is under way this week and as such we wanted to share some interesting polling and data points with you.

1. Copper Sentiment Since 2015. Although this is from COMEX, we notice a similar trend. Notice the recent uptick. 

2. Warehouse levels dropped ~4% once again last week. Now sitting at ~450,000 at the three major exchanges, COMEX, LME and SHFE.  NOTE copper inventories are sitting at 7 days usage in warehouses. The question is how much copper sits “off warrant” (annual demand is ~24Mts). The trend below is not sustainable, something is going to have to break soon.

3. So what do participants feel about the copper price over the next 12 months?  Macquarie did a poll of 400 clients at LME. Here is the result of their un-scientific poll asking, what % of attendees are “short” and “long” in various base metals. View orange arrow, effectively only 5% of those polled would be short – so who is short? Who is selling? And who or what is sucking all the tonnage from global warehouses? Copper Price collapsing same time as warehouses emptying?  

4. Prognosticating the future price of any commodity is a mugs games. In any event, Macquarie’s poll suggests most participants see copper back over $3/lb for the next 12 months.