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Copper currently has a "15-day winning streak" per Justine Underhill of Yahoo! Finance. She also said something about Freeport McMoRan (Ticker: FCX) being up something like 35% in the last month. I have a lot of experience trading FCX stock, but have backed away quite a bit over the last year or so, since they have lots of political instability at their giant Grasberg mine in Indonesia. Their has even been violence in the area. I don't see this truly being resolved anytime soon.

Back to copper- It does appear that copper has been steadily up for the last month or so when looking at historical charts at kitcometals.com. Also, copper is near a roughly 3 1/2 year high.

We have to wait for our resident copper expert (also known as Adam) to chime in before we really know what's going on .

Recyclersteve wrote:Copper currently has a "15-day winning streak" per Justine Underhill of Yahoo! Finance. She also said something about Freeport McMoRan (Ticker: FCX) being up something like 35% in the last month. I have a lot of experience trading FCX stock, but have backed away quite a bit over the last year or so, since they have lots of political instability at their giant Grasberg mine in Indonesia. Their has even been violence in the area. I don't see this truly being resolved anytime soon.

Back to copper- It does appear that copper has been steadily up for the last month or so when looking at historical charts at kitcometals.com. Also, copper is near a roughly 3 1/2 year high.

FCX has been one of my best stock picks yet. I ended up buying it 4 cents from the bottom and am currently up over 400%. That being said I am starting to consider selling it. I agree that the Grasberg mine is a HUGE issue. Close to 30% of their copper holdings and almost all of the gold holdings come from that mine. I believe India is going to still cause problems and this will be an ongoing issue for the next several years.

DO NOT trade on my opinions.



As far as copper goes I think we are going to continue seeing the price rise steadily. As some point there will be a pullback, but the charts show/predict a shortage of copper. Starting in 2018 China is going to be a LOT pickier about the scrap they are willing to accept as imports. With major restrictions coming on importations the recycle supply of copper is set to drop by something like 25-35%! It could end up being a non event as well because China isn't giving specific information on the restrictions yet.

I know this is going to sound ridiculous, but last year I traded FCX over 130 times and made $ every single time! When it went down 10-15% after I bought it, I just bought more. Sometimes I did this several times before selling. Also traded covered calls on FCX. That is the only time in my life that I’ve traded the same stock that many times in a single year without losing, so don’t think I do that all the time.

Recyclersteve wrote:I know this is going to sound ridiculous, but last year I traded FCX over 130 times and made $ every single time! When it went down 10-15% after I bought it, I just bought more. Sometimes I did this several times before selling. Also traded covered calls on FCX. That is the only time in my life that I’ve traded the same stock that many times in a single year without losing, so don’t think I do that all the time.

Another forum member invested in FCX shortly after me and we both made several comments that if we had more time a lot of money could be made by trading FCX on a weekly or monthly basis.

FCX is an excellent trading vehicle for me. I sell out of the money puts on it mostly. Twice in the last 18 months I got "put" into it, so I sold out of the money calls and twice got called away, once at the price I was put into it (thus pocketing the call premium) and once a dollar above the price I had been put into it (thus pocketing the call premium AND making a capital gain).

To show you how far FCX has run this month alone, on Dec 1 I sold a bunch of DEC 29 FCX 13.5 Puts (@0.30/contract - a nice premium). The stock itself was at about 14 at the time I did the trade. FCX closed today at 19.27!!!! Thats a 37% gain in 28 days.

Yes, I missed the run up but man, FCX has provided me with some nice, relatively easy money over the last year and a half.

Keep stacking, guys.

One possible factor which might be helping the run that copper had recently is this...

Currently, power is still out to roughly 50% of Puerto Rico more than three months after the big hurricane. They have shortages of power poles, conductors, insulators, etc. I would imagine there is also a shortage of items requiring copper. And, in addition to the power grid, that also likely includes cars and appliances that were damaged.

Then add Houston and Florida to the mix after the hurricanes they had. Also, don't forget California and all the damage from the wildfires in both Northern Calif. and Southern Calif.

All of these combined would seem to add a fair amount of demand for copper. Has anyone seen any good stats on this?

Would copper be 'damaged' or would it be recyclable? I would think copper would be helped much more by 'new demand' or economic development.

I hear zinc is the next big play to follow coppers run, it's been a big play, if not better all along here as well.