Copper Jumps Most in a Week as Stockpiles Fall in London, China

By Millie Munshi

March 13 (Bloomberg) -- Copper rose by the most in a week as global stockpiles fell, signaling demand may be stabilizing for the metal used in pipes and wires.

Inventories monitored by the London Metal Exchange fell 1.3 percent to 497,625 metric tons today. LME supplies are down 9.3 percent from a five-year high on Feb. 25. Stockpiles monitored by the Shanghai Futures Exchange decreased 9.7 percent this week to 34,735 tons. Before today, copper rose 15 percent this year on speculation that demand will rebound.

“Helping sentiment has been the across-the-board decline we are seeing in copper stocks,” Edward Meir, an MF Global Ltd. analyst in Darien, Connecticut, said today in a research note.

Copper futures for May delivery jumped 5.25 cents, or 3.2 percent, to $1.677 a pound at 9:08 a.m. on the New York Mercantile Exchange’s Comex division. A close at that price would mark the biggest one-day gain since March 4.

“Copper prices and inventory have a very high inverse correlation,” Gijsbert Groenewegen, a partner at Gold Arrow Capital Management in New York, said yesterday. “People really watch the inventories.”

On the LME, copper for delivery in three months climbed $110, or 3.1 percent, to $3,690 a metric ton ($1.67 a pound). The price reached a record $8,940 on July 2.

To contact the reporter on this story: Millie Munshi in New York at mmunshi@bloomberg.net.