copper gains in new york on speculation chinese de, page-4

Text from today's SMH:

This winter's oil and copper crash might prove to be a false alarm. Michael Lewis, commodity chief at Deutsche Bank, said crude would snap back on the first cold wind.

"It's really a story about El Nino," he said. "There have been blasts of warmer air across the Northern Hemisphere for the last three months. The US economy may come off the rails at the end of 2007 but we think there is still enough liquidity for now, and we are very optimistic about Asia."

Robin Bhar, UBS metals analyst, said de-stocking by China's State Reserves Bureau had hammered copper over recent months, setting off speculative attacks by "black box traders" once the price fell through support. Funds now have the highest volume of "short" contracts since 2001.

Demand will rebound because China still needs a quarter of global supply to feed its factories and electrify its new cities. Local output meets 50 per cent of use.

"China's stockpiles are so low they are going to have start importing again," he said.

The "New Paradigm" of commodity bulls and market optimists is that the emerging powers are now rich and resilient enough to go it alone, whatever happens to the US.