this is from an article by scott wright of zeal intelligence:

From mid-2005 to mid-2008 copper averaged over $3, thus prompting aggressive industry-wide exploration and development programs. These high prices also allowed the producers to profitably mine lower-grade ore within the confines of existing operations as well as bring past-producing mines back to life.

But these lower-grade, thus higher cost, operations and development projects that were economically feasible at higher copper prices are now losers. Production cutbacks, mine closures, and the scrapping of now-uneconomical exploration and development projects will eventually translate into materially lower mine production. Supply will eventually shrink enough to balance demand, even if demand stays weak for an extended period of time.

Regardless of where this balance is met, I believe copper has seen its low. And investors and speculators have taken advantage of this wildly oversold environment to reap fantastic gains as the markets bounce back to reality. As mentioned the futures traders have seen the metal pop 50%+ since the beginning of the year. But stock traders have fared even better.

By the time the dust settled at the initial panic low in November, the copper miners had leveraged copper’s losses to the downside in a big way. Even the world’s largest copper stocks had sold off by 80% or so from their highs. As mentioned earlier investors had discounted an apocalyptic ending to the commodities trade and sold their shares with reckless abandon. But in hindsight this November stock-market low was the time to load up on commodities stocks, especially copper stocks.

After coming to the brilliant conclusion that the world wasn’t coming to an end and we weren’t entering into the next Great Depression, buyers returned to commodities stocks and took advantage of their wildly oversold levels.

Copper stocks in particular have been among the best performers in the entire markets in the last 4+ months. Many have already seen triple-digit gains from their bottoms in the midst of an S&P 500 grind that had seen new lows set just last month.