The negative headwinds are concerning though.

There's negativity all around, on the supply side as well. I don't know when the bad news for copper supply is going to catch up with the market price, but there is a hint from Chinese buyers that they are watching.

A major Chinese copper producer has declared force majeure at one of its smelters, in a move that is likely to halve the amount of metal it supplies to customers for the next few months. Jinchuan is likely to miss its output target of 600,000 tons of refined copper by the end of this year, mainly due to a shortage of scrap copper and the unexpected force majeure, the company official said. He forecast Jinchuan's copper output will total around 250,000 tons this year. "We have been saying that the refined market has been tightened by a scrap shortage in China and disruptions in several other markets," Ms. Cheng said, referring partly to supply problems at two of the world's largest copper mines: Freeport-McMoRan Copper & Gold Inc.'s FCX -3.60% Grasberg operation in Indonesia and Rio Tinto RIO.LN -4.50% PLC's Bingham Canyon mine in the U.S.--http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424127887324299104578528731246475470.html

Then there is the problem with bottlenecks forming in LME warehouses. Apparently it used to take 3 days to remove copper from the warehouse and now it can be months. I think this means the stored metals are higher than usual, but it's a different game.

The chief executive of the London Metal Exchange said Tuesday that the exchange's most-recent rule change aimed at tackling the controversial issue of metal getting stuck in warehousing load-out queues and being rendered more inaccessible to buyers may have inadvertently opened the door for copper to be used as a new financing tool, and thus increased the risk of copper being subject to these types of warehouse bottlenecks.--http://online.wsj.com/article/BT-CO-20130409-708779.html

Then there is speculation on the buy side:

What is China’s State Reserves Bureau up to? That has been the talk of the copper market since I reported this week that China’s secretive and powerful stockpiling agency had been making inquiries about buying the red metal, having earlier this year purchased nickel on the international market for the first time since the financial crisis. If it is the case that the SRB sees prices of $6,800-$7,000 as good value, the implications for the market are significant.--http://www.ft.com/intl/cms/s/0/4b6c52d8-cd3e-11e2-90e8-00144feab7de.html#axzz2Wm3x8iAV