Re: "They anticipate demand will outstrip supply in copper from about 2018 onwards at least for a decade." Anticipate is kinda like speculate and it seems investors don't have much interest for speculation right now.

I agree that the market isn't interested in speculation of resources right now. The weird point is that they ARE interested if the speculation is towards China slowing by driving down the copper price. However, the market has been anticipating a copper inventory surplus ALL year...But the REALITY has been an inventory deficit for 2014. But that hasn't made the copper price go up. So right now the speculation is all one sided - the market only wants to hear the bad news.