Copper Settles Near Record at $14,622 a Ton as UBS Backs Four Miners and Chile Strike Begins

London copper futures settled at roughly $14,622 per metric ton on Friday, Oct. 9, a hair below all-time highs. The week brought a bank call, a labor stoppage in Chile and a warning about inventories.

The bank call came from UBS. In a Friday note, Théa Ziegler of the bank's U.S. equity advisory sales team wrote that copper "remains one of the highest-conviction commodity themes." She pointed to electrification and data-center construction as demand drivers and said supply growth is expected to "lag demand growth for several years."

That, she wrote, underpins elevated prices "despite near-term uncertainty around tariffs and trade policy."

UBS names its miners

Ziegler's note says the team "continues to favor copper-linked miners with meaningful leverage to the theme." The preferred exposures are Freeport-McMoRan, First Quantum, Hudbay and Teck Resources.

This is a sales-desk note from a bank recommending stocks. It is a view, not a market fact, and it comes from a firm that earns money when clients trade.

UBS also published numbers. It expects the global copper deficit to widen to 379,000 metric tons in 2027, up from an estimated 219,000 tons in 2026. That is an increase of 160,000 tons. The bank sees copper reaching $15,500 per ton during 2027 and advises clients to stay long. It also says any short-term dip could be a chance to add positions.

Chile's Centinela strike

Natalia Corfield, JPMorgan's head of Latin America corporate credit research, flagged that a strike has begun at Centinela, one of Antofagasta's major copper operations in Chile. Bloomberg cited the two unions behind the walkout, who warned that Centinela could start cutting copper production within about two weeks if the strike continues.

The mine is not small. Centinela produced 240,400 metric tons of copper in 2025, more than 35% of Antofagasta's total output.

No output loss has been reported so far. The warning is a timeline set by the unions, not a measured drop in production.

Inventories and the stockpiling question

Deutsche Bank's head of metals research, Daniel Ghali, warned last month that global copper inventories have fallen to "unprecedented lows." He blamed part of that on U.S. and Chinese stockpiling, which he said is squeezing supply elsewhere.

Ghali has set a second-quarter 2027 London target of $22,050 per ton. That is far above UBS's $15,500 forecast for 2027.

Two major banks, both bullish, differ widely on where copper could go. That gap shows how much of this is forecast rather than fact.

The caveat built into the bull case

The optimism has a stated limit. UBS itself cites tariffs and trade policy as near-term uncertainty. Stockpiling by the United States and China, which Ghali says is tightening supply for everyone else, is a policy-driven demand source rather than end-use consumption. Stockpiles can be built up and later drawn down.

What can be measured is simpler. Prices are near records, inventories are low by Deutsche Bank's account, and a mine that supplied more than a third of one major producer's output in 2025 has stopped work.

The next marker is the unions' two-week window. If Centinela's output begins to fall, the supply story moves from forecast to fact. If the strike is settled first, the unions' warning will not be borne out.