Copper price today, live, in dollars a pound

Signals, right now

Copper is the one commodity that is also a forecast

It goes into wiring, motors, transformers and grid cable, so demand for it is demand for building things. That is why it gets called a leading indicator: the order is placed before the factory, the substation or the data centre exists. Treat that reputation carefully. It has been a poor predictor whenever supply was the story instead, and mine disruption and smelter capacity have driven several of the last decade's biggest moves.

Dollars a pound, tonnes everywhere else

This contract quotes dollars per pound, the US convention. The London Metal Exchange quotes dollars per tonne, and a tonne is 2,204.6 pounds, so a headline of ten thousand dollars a tonne is about four dollars fifty a pound. Most of the confusion about the copper price is this and nothing more. Multiply before concluding that two sources disagree.

Electrification is a demand story with a slow supply answer

Grid upgrades, electric vehicles and data centre power draw all consume copper, and a new mine takes the better part of a decade from discovery to first metal. A demand shift therefore shows up in price long before it shows up in supply, which is the structural argument people make for the metal. It also means the seven-day chart above is mostly noise against that timescale; the range position tells you about positioning this week, not about the thesis.

The part we cannot verify

Pacifica publishes the symbol, the live book and hourly candles. It does not publish how the copper reference price is derived, nor the interval its funding rate settles over, so the funding figure above is per interval and not annualised. The price was checked against an independent copper quote when this page was built and agreed to just over one percent, which is consistent with the two using different reference contracts.