Market Harmony wrote:There are 2 ways to look at this, and they are opposites.
Bullish: restocking will affect the supply-demand equilibrium, thus copper price increases
Bearish: current lower stockpiles are in anticipation of declining future demand, which if correct, would cause prices to decrease
If you could accurately answer, "why are the stockpiles declining?" Then the type of relationship between future copper price and current Chinese stockpiles might become a little more clear.
“Metal has been leaving the bonded warehouses at quite a steady pace because it is the
peak-demand season,” said Jia Zheng, a trader at Shanghai East Asia. “China is still growing, which is keeping demand robust.”