Welcome to Lord Copper

Opinions about lots of things - mostly related to the worlds' metal markets

On a Marché sur la Lune

27 May 2020

Buying metals from Russia in the 1990s was always a serious business. But there were times when, I confess, I felt more like Tintin than James Bond. The occasion I felt this most keenly was sometime in 1993 when a good friend of mine, who had travelled frequently with me to Russia on hunting trips, decided to deliver some little sacks of rhenium metal powder in his Beechcraft four-seater airplane to Fairoaks’ Airport near Woking, rather than Heathrow.

Time for another MoU?

20 May 2020

Last week, US aluminium giant Alcoa Corp made a plea for the global industry to enact production cuts, or be hit by a rise in inventories, leading, inevitably, to prolonged low prices.

Les Gaulois Irreductibles

13 May 2020

In the strange world created by the coronavirus swirling around the world, some other items of news have been getting less attention than they deserve (and some far more, frankly, but that’s another story). Near the end of March, Albert Uderzo died.

When Rubber meets Road

06 May 2020

In a previous article, I wrote about a possible dollar melt up with the dollar continuing to strengthen regardless of massive monetary creation in order to maintain solvency in an already debt bloated global financial system. (All as a consequence of the "everything bubble" being popped by the pandemic.) The slow motion economic crash that has persisted for the last decade has just been taken to warp speed as viral terrorism takes hold.

How the Covid crisis propelled Germanium into the limelight

29 April 2020

Cometh the hour, cometh the metal. Like rhenium, a mere particle in its host ores and concentrates, the quantity of germanium atoms can average between 100-500 grams per metric tonne in zinc concentrates, with as little as 20 grams per mt in ore.

Munch's Spaniel

22 April 2020

I’ve never really liked Edvard Munch’s The Scream; I don’t know why - somebody else thought it was worth $120 million a short while ago - but it doesn’t do anything for me. Or, perhaps more accurately, it’s a very disturbing piece of art, but I wouldn’t give it houseroom; perhaps because it is so disturbing.

Dollar Melt-Up

15 April 2020

The very same financial schemes and processes that were employed during the crash of 2008 are once again being used to support the global financial system in the wake of the Covid 19 pandemic. This time, however, we are seeing what could be described as stimulus on steroids.