Copper's cash price just hit an all-time high, and the spread is the scary part

The cash price for LME copper hit $14,453.60 a ton on 11 August, but the number that should worry industrial buyers is the spread: cash copper now trades $171 above three-month futures, the widest gap since October last year, as Reuters reports. That's not a demand story so much as a logistics one. The Democratic Republic of Congo's export ban on copper and cobalt concentrates, combined with a rush of US importers front-running possible tariffs (record imports above 200,000 metric tons in July alone), has pulled metal out of LME warehouses faster than it can be replaced. Readily available LME stock sat at just 92,900 tons in early August. Bank of America reckons the supply gap could widen to 500,000 tons this year. Fabricators locked into annual contracts are about to discover the difference between the price they budgeted for and the price they'll actually pay to get metal delivered this month.