London Metal Exchange (LME) copper stocks will stay depleted despite persistent talk of imminent deliveries in excess of 30,000 tonnes of metal, traders and analysts said on Tuesday. Even if the rumours turned out to be true, such deliveries would do little to ease tight supply in the medium term. "I have heard rumours of large tonnages about to arrive, but I think it is rubbish," one European trader said.
"This is the sixth time this year I have heard that large amounts of copper are arriving in Singapore or South Korea or Rotterdam," he added.
Copper stocks in LME bonded warehouses fell to a 31-year low of 28,875 tonnes on July 1, before rising 750 tonnes on Monday. Overnight, stocks fell to 29,450 tonnes, equivalent to just over half a day's global consumption.
Traders expected deliveries to warehouses to rise by amounts of the order of 500 to 2,000 tonnes, but said drawdowns would continue.
They said the latest talk of shipments of between 30,000 and 40,000 tonnes started to circulate soon after copper prices hit an all-time high of $3,435 on June 20.
"There is a lot of conjecture (about stocks) at the moment that may be coming from people with short positions trying to talk the market down," a UK-based trader said.
He said additional material might be held in hidden stocks but would not go into warehouses immediately.
"There are too many games yet to play. When the summer (holidays) really kick in next week, the market will be even thinner, there will less liquidity and it will take less to move it," he said.
"LME stocks will continue to come down. Someone will panic and buy the backwardation and the market will then go up."
At that point anybody holding big tonnages of copper would deliver into warehouses.
A senior official at a trading company in Singapore said: "There's a lot of material that's not yet been flushed out. It should come out now that prices have started going down, and people would like to sell it and take profit."
But the first trader said he doubted the existence of any large inventories.
"I don't think there are any hidden stocks. We have tried to find them, but couldn't.
"If you can find someone who can sell me 2,000 tonnes of cathode per month between July and December, I would happily pay $110 to $115 a tonne.
"With prices like this, if someone was stocking copper at the moment I think their shareholders would kill them."
The backwardation, or premium for cash metal, was $202 above the three month price on Tuesday, easing from around 9-1/2-year highs around $280/290 at the end of June.
"If this material was around, I think the backwardation would have been softer," an LME ring dealer said.
Barclays Capital commodity analyst Ingrid Sternby said: "I think at the moment there are shipments on their way to Asia, and deliveries to Singapore would have a temporary negative effect on LME prices.
"But even 40,000 tonnes would do very little in the medium term to the tightness in the market."