I am fascinated by this tug of war. As you stated the copper stocks at LME, CMX, and SHFE keep going down. Every time there is a hint of a China slowdown, they copper price gets slammed again. Yet, the copper stocks keep going down. All because there is all this off-site storage of copper, which no one seems to know the amount. I don't get what makes people think that they will release it just because they have it?

The main driver of the lower price seems to be this expected surplus for 2014. It is interesting though that there have lots of disruptions with some big ones because of the Indonesia banned raw exports. The market doesn't seemed to have accounted for all the supply not coming on online.

http://www.mining.com/newmont-halts-all-operations-in-indonesia-declares-force-majeure-11569/

I don't know what will happen, so while some of the over supply scenarios seem possible. I'm finding the scenarios for a big jump in price is also very valid. Time will time. In the meantime, it is good to see potential shortages when one has a potential mine. :)

On another topic.

I saw a story about the Pebble project in Alaska and was curious why Teck had walked from that project. I found the following article on how 4 majors have walked away from that project. I love that he describes Teck as "Cominco was the most experienced northern miner in the world". And Teck is the operator for SC - we are are good hands.

http://www.adn.com/2014/05/22/3482039/bruce-switzer-pebble-project-has.html