Copper put in a barnstorming performance on the London Metal Exchange (LME) on Tuesday, rising $870 a tonne, or 11.4 percent, the biggest ever daily gain, as the metals complex recovered from a recent correction.
Other metals also roared higher as short-covering, buy-stops, and renewed speculative buying spread throughout a hectic afternoon session, traders said.
Nickel rose 6.3 percent to hit a new record high, zinc advanced six percent, while there were 4.9 percent and 3.9 percent gains for tin and aluminium respectively.
"It's amazing - I just feel that nothing really changed from when it sold off over the last week - the speculative froth was blown off, that's all," an investment fund source said.
Copper, which ended Monday at $7,590, closed at its intra-day peak of $8,460, having risen $1,055, or 14.2 percent, from its early low. On Friday it had slumped 6.7 percent, the biggest percentage drop since January 4, 2005. "The volatility there is incredible...copper is in a bull market, period," the fund source said.
It was not base metals - other commodities and related shares rose sharply as confidence returned.
"Everything has gone up - we've got gold, oil, stock markets, and mining equities all going in the same direction," a trader said.
Britain's FTSE 100 notched up its biggest daily gain in more than three years, with mining stocks, such as Kazakhmys and Xstrata gaining more than 10 percent.
"Today's action is probably the most encouraging for the last week or so. However, we would like to see the market hold these gains today and tomorrow in order to see that the trend now points up," analyst Edward Meir at Man Financial said.
Copper prices declined some 15 percent since hitting a record high of $8,800 on May 11 during the retracement, but they are still up about 70 percent since the end of last year.
"The underlying fundamentals of supply and demand remain the same as we stated at the half-year," analyst William Adams at BaseMetals.com said.
If nothing has fundamentally changed, from a positioning and flow perspective "the recent sell-off has cleared a lot of long positions out of the market, reducing the risk of a further correction," a UBS report noted.
Fundamentally, the investment bank was bullish, pointing to strong demand, with global growth still robust, and slow supply response that looked set to disappoint further due to production interruptions and strikes.
Nickel was another beneficiary, rising $1,320 to $22,195, against a background of falling inventories - now at the lowest level since November 2001, down by 978 tonnes to 19,368.
"We expect the market to remain well-supported by strong demand from the stainless steel sector - the consumer inventory cycle is now at a positive stage - as well as concerns on the supply side ahead of the labour negotiations at Inco's Sudbury division," Barclays Capital said in a report.
Aluminium rose to $2,870 from $2,760, while zinc reached $3,520 from $3,320. Zinc inventories fell to 245,150 tonne, down 1,125, the lowest level since April 2001.
Lead matched the trend, rising $30 to $1,170, although stocks continue to rise - up 575 tonnes to 106,350, the highest since January 2004. Tin was at $8,550/8,600, up $400.