Global copper short-term outlook August 2017

The copper market service short term outlook (STO) is published monthly and provides a forecast of copper supply and demand fundamentals over the next two-years. August has seen copper rally to its highest level since September 2014 as the market has benefitted from a combination of dollar weakness, declining exchange inventories, robust macro data and a rise in speculative interest in industrial commodities. In our view, however, prices have run ahead of what is currently justified by the copper market's fundamentals. Lacklustre physical premia indicate that consumers remain well covered for material and overall we expect a broadly balanced market this year.