The shift to copper investment appears to have started, with price rises and broker advice gaining momentum.

The Australian Financial Review covered copper’s rise in two significant articles last week.

In one, titled ‘Copper’s time is now as traders switch from iron ore’, it said 11-month highs of $US9000 ($13,700) a tonne were fuelled by the energy transition and the booming artificial intelligence sector.

Citi analysts said: “Copper has a set of unique characteristics that make it THE bullish energy transition and AI trade within the commodity complex.”

It was recommending investors start buying the metal over the next three to six months.

The AFR reported Goldman Sachs was similarly bullish, declaring that “copper’s time is now”.

Full story here.

The second AFR piece highlighted how influential copper prices had become on the performance of the Australian dollar.

“The Aussie [dollar] should be very responsive to iron ore prices, because iron ore is still easily our biggest export by a big margin, but it hasn’t been in the last six months or so,” said Tim Baker, head of macro research at Deutsche Bank.

Rodrigo Catril, a senior FX strategist at National Australia Bank, echoed the thought. “The Australian dollar tends to have a stronger and more stable relationship with copper, which tends to be a good barometer of global growth and manufacturing activity.”

Full story here.

Even News.com jumped on the copper bandwagon, highlighting the differing fortunes between iron ore and copper.

‘’Australia’s number one export may be on its knees but there are two investments that are skyrocketing – and copper is one of them”, it said.

Full coverage here.