Someone has correctly pointed out recently how the copper inventories are shifting from the LME warehouses to the SHFE warehouses. If you click the link below, the first chart shows the combined inventoryies is quite interesting and while SHFE is gaining lots, but the how total levels are somewhat in balance.

http://blogs.wsj.com/moneybeat/2016/03/23/doctor-copper-hiding-in-shanghai-warehouse/

One thing it shows me is total copper inventories are not currently in a "glut" situation as I seem to read quite often lately. Unless they are hiding somewhere else that no one has pointed out to me.

Similar articles talking about the shift of copper between the warehouses:

http://www.hellenicshippingnews.com/aluminum-and-copper-empty-from-worlds-biggest-metals-bourse/

http://uk.reuters.com/article/column-russell-commodities-china-idUKL3N16V1TF

And finally, I read an very long article about gold but towards the end interview he talks about how people many start buying commodities like copper just a protection against financial messes of our governments. I copied just that part of the article below:

http://seekingalpha.com/article/3960499-david-skarica-first-inning-major-bull-market-gold

DS: Well, I think at some of the commodities like iron ore there was just a big short covering rally. But some of the commodities that do have big gluts like iron ore they are going to take a little while because you got to work through that glut. Oil is the same way. But I tend to agree with Milton Friedman, the famous economist; he used to say about inflation. I do not agree with Friedman on everything, but I agree with him on inflation where he says that inflation always is and will be a monetary phenomena.

What he is basically saying is that if they print too much money- it does not matter if economic growth as weak. In every country that has hyper inflation like Argentina had or Venezuela right now, economic growth is weak. It is just that they are printing too much money and there is too much money flopping around chasing too few goods and prices go higher. My feeling is that- and this is actually my feeling from all along in 2000 when I started getting involved in commodities. I did not believe in the commodities super cycle or up cycle because of China and India. I believed it because all these western governments are broke and will have to print money and they will create inflation to kind of inflate away their debt.

For example, Japan, which has been in so called deflation, I say so called because, you know, go rent a one bedroom apartment in Tokyo for $4,000 a month and call that deflation, right? But, anyhow, I say Japan, which has been in deflation for 25 years; usually these deflationary debt spirals end in hyper inflation. Actually there was deflation in Weimar, Germany before hyper inflation. What I feel is in the next monetary kind of printing that goes on right now, this has been a financially induced bubble by monetary printing. It has all gone into stock market. It has all gone into buy backs. It has all gone into cheap debt. That was how you got the big boom in fracking and that sort of thing.

But the next time around when that bubble ends and people realize, "Well, that did not work," you know, putting all these money into financial assets did not work. I want to protect myself because these companies can issue more debt. They can issue more shares. The central banks can issue more money. I want to be in real stuff. They cannot print copper. They cannot print gold. They cannot print even oil and gas even though it is a glut right now.

I think ultimately this and the next monetary cycle it will go into commodities and people will not know what is happening. They will say, "Well, China's slowing down. This is not doing well, blah, blah, blah." I actually think when people say the commodity super cycle is at an end, they do not get that. They think it all had to do with India and China. My opinion it is going to have to do with monetary inflation.

Also look at it this way: In the 2000s when we had this commodity boom it was not just China. It was that was the peak of the dollar back in 2001, that was the first round of near zero interest rates under Greenspan during the housing bubble, and that also inflated the prices of commodities. I think we will see a certain area on the next move more similar to the '70s where you will have this inflationary spiral in commodities due to the monetary printing and not really due to economic fundamentals.

By the way, these commodity indices that they say are going to 15 or 17 or 18- year lows, it is kind of BS because what has happened is they get reweighted all the time. If oil and gas goes down 30% it is reweighted back higher and then it goes down another 30%. That is the problem when you are reweighting all the time because- give me one commodity outside, let us say natural gas, that is below its 1998 low. Silver was like $4 then. Silver still was like $14, $15. Gold was like $300 then. Gold is almost a thousand dollars higher. Even oil and gas bottomed in the mid teens then; oil and gas is north of $30.

Every commodity has doubled or tripled for the most part its 1998 low yet these commodity indices are saying things are getting 20-year lows. It does not make sense. My opinion is if you go look at some of the other commodity super cycles- I will quickly talk about one just to end off here. But the '30s and '40s, believe it or not, even though everyone thinks the '30s was deflationary and the Great Depression from '29 to '32 was, but actually there was a huge commodity boom from 1933 to 1951. In the middle of that boom during the '37, '38 recession, which is I think similar to what we are going to see here, there was this huge decline, took back almost all the gains of the move from '33 to '37. Then when the money printing came in and World War II came in and that inflated the prices and created demand for the war, whatever, for planes and tanks and blah, blah, blah, there was a huge commodity boom in the '40s.

I think we will see the same thing here where we are seeing this kind of bust which is taking away a lot of the gains the last ten or fifteen years. But then on the next move when they print money again you will see a boom higher.