Today, the most-traded BC copper 2601 contract opened at 78,180 yuan/mt and closed lower intraday. During the night session, it opened at 78,110 yuan/mt, hitting the session low initially, then the price center rose steadily as bulls increased their positions. After the day session opened, copper prices opened higher with a gap, touched a high of 80,200 yuan/mt during the morning trading hours, and then fluctuated rangebound at elevated levels, eventually settling at 79,990 yuan/mt, up 2,160 yuan/mt, a gain of 2.78%. Open interest reached 4,617 lots, an increase of 851 lots from the previous trading day, while trading volume reached 11,955 lots, up 6,759 lots WoW. On the macro front, Trump's plan to nominate a dove as Fed Chairman boosted market optimism for a December interest rate cut, with a weaker US dollar providing support for copper prices. Meanwhile, Chile's October copper production fell 7% YoY, coupled with expectations for production cuts by domestic smelters, further fueled concerns over tight supply, also benefiting copper prices. On the fundamentals side, reduced imported supply and normal arrivals of domestic material kept overall supply tight, while demand side, high copper prices dampened downstream purchasing sentiment. As of December 1, 2025, social inventory of copper cathode in major domestic regions decreased by 14,500 mt WoW to 159,000 mt.
SHFE's most-traded copper 2601 contract settled at 89,280 yuan/mt. Based on the BC copper 2601 contract price of 79,990 yuan/mt, its post-tax price is 90,389 yuan/mt, resulting in a price spread of -1,109 yuan/mt between the SHFE copper 2601 and BC copper contracts. The spread remained inverted and widened from the previous day.
