Hong Kong Stock Concept Tracking | LME Inventories Were Nearly Hollowed Out, and it was revealed that Mo Corey was massively picking up copper (with concept stocks)

The Zhitong Finance App learned that global commodity trading giant Mercuria Energy Group Ltd. is speeding up the accumulation of copper to cope with global supply shortages caused by potential US tariffs. People familiar with the matter revealed that the company has applied to extract about 50,000 tons of copper from warehouses supervised by the London Metal Exchange (LME), which is the largest inventory removal operation in more than 10 years, and directly pushes copper prices to a record high of 11,500 US dollars per ton.

Commodity trading giant Mercuria (Mercuria) has issued a notice that it plans to extract large amounts of copper from the London Metal Exchange (LME)'s Asian warehouses. Four people familiar with the matter revealed that Mocory cancelled the warehouse receipt on December 2 and is scheduled to extract more than 40,000 tons of copper metal stored in LME's warehouses in Asia. At current prices, this batch of copper is worth around US$460 million.

LME's data for the day also showed that the number of copper pick-up requests from the warehouses it tracks surged by 50,575 tons (in terms of tonnage, this is the biggest increase since 2013), reaching 56,875 tons, accounting for 35% of LME's total inventory. Macquarie's actions have further increased the premium of spot copper contracts compared to the three-month copper futures price (that is, “spot increase”, spot to futures premium, backwardation).

Analysts believe that most of the copper that left the LME system was shipped to the US. Previously, the Trump administration granted a tariff exemption on refined copper. However, after that, the US passed the Defense Production Act to list copper as a key mineral in an attempt to guarantee its own supply of copper resources.

It is worth noting that most of the copper in LME inventory comes from China and Russia. These metals cannot be used to deliver New York Mercantile Exchange contracts, so traders are transferring copper from LME to allow more deliverable metals to flow to the US. On Thursday alone, traders removed an additional 7,450 tons from storage.

Goldman Sachs pointed out in a report released on Wednesday that communication with spot traders showed that the flow of copper to the US in the first half of 2026 will “restart faster than expected.” The sharp rise in copper prices on the same day was “mainly driven by LME withdrawals, and these withdrawals may release more metals to the US.”

As global traders rush copper into the US and exchange inventories continue to decline, upward momentum for copper prices to break through continues to accumulate, causing this wave of markets to think the “long overdue” super cycle may actually begin.

Copper ore series non-ferrous metals Hong Kong stocks:

Copper ore: Luoyang Molybdenum (03993), Zijin Mining (02899), Minmetals Resources (01208), Jiangxi Copper (00358), China Nonferrous Mining (01258), China Metallurgical (01618), etc.;

Copper clad plate: Jiantao laminated board (01888), Jiantao Group (00148)