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CONKLING KOPCIKECONOMICS
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Energy, Utilities & Critical Minerals

Copper — Monthly Price (LME)

The monthly price of copper on the London Metal Exchange (LME), from the World Bank's Pink Sheet.

Data status: Current
Official statisticCK forecastSource figures as of October 16, 2026 · Exponential smoothing, damped trend, 3 months, 80% range of backtest errorsSources & methods
Sources
World Bank
Period covered
Jan 1960 – Sep 2026
Source figures as of
October 16, 2026
Geography
World (benchmark market price)
Sector
Energy, Utilities & Critical Minerals
Seasonal adjustment
Not seasonally adjusted
Transformations
Views other than the level (changes, averages, volatility) are calculated by CK Economics from these figures. The constant-dollar view divides by the BLS consumer price index (CPI-U)
Forecast method
Exponential smoothing, damped trend
Assumptions
Past patterns continue, with no policy change or shock; fitted to Oct 2006 – Sep 2026
Horizon
3 months
Interval
80% range of backtest errors
Backtest
Errors 7% smaller than a no-change forecast over the next 3 months (40 past dates)
Estimated
October 16, 2026
Revisions
Replaced with the source’s latest figures whenever it revises them.
Data status
Current
Limitations
Seasonal swings are left in: compare a period with the same period a year earlier.

Full method · Research standards

Key figures

CK estimateUS$ per metric ton · calculated by CK Economics from World Bank data

Latest · Sep 2026
14,474
+45.0% vs a year earlier1
5-year change
+55.2%
since Sep 2021, +9.2% a year2
10-year change
+206.5%
since Sep 2016, +11.9% a year2
Record high
14,474
Sep 20263
Record low
607
Jan 19613
Where the latest ranks
100th pct.
Higher than 100% of the other 800 observations since Jan 19604
CK forecast · Dec 2026
15,000
80% range 13,600–16,9005
  1. 1Latest observation against the observation one year earlier (for weekly data, the nearest within three days).
  2. 2Latest observation against the observation five and ten years earlier; the yearly rate is the compound annual growth rate over the span.
  3. 3Highest and lowest published observations across the full history shown.
  4. 4Share of the other published observations that are lower than the latest one, rounded down.
  5. 5Final period of the CK forecast, a statistical projection from the model in the methodology, with its 80% range; rounded to three significant figures.

Seasonal pattern

CK estimate

Each month of 2026 and 2025 against the average and range of the same month in 2021–2025. Calculated by CK Economics from the published series.

Monthly US$ per metric ton in 2026 and 2025 compared with the 2021–2025 average and range
2026 2025 2021–2025 average 2021–2025 range

Methodology

LME grade A copper (at least 99.9935% pure), cathodes and wire bar shapes, settlement price. Underlying sources: Bloomberg, Engineering and Mining Journal, Platts Metals Week, Thomson Reuters Datastream and the World Bank. The World Bank's Pink Sheet reports monthly average prices in nominal US dollars, not adjusted for inflation (the chart's constant-dollar option can adjust them). The World Bank compiles them from the market sources it names for each commodity and updates the workbook early each month; recent months can be revised. The World Bank publishes the data under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 licence. The series runs from January 1960. Projection: CK Economics statistical projection. The central path comes from exponential smoothing (ETS) on the logarithm of the series with a damped additive trend, so recent growth is carried forward but fades over time. It runs only as far ahead as backtests support: the model is refitted at past dates, its forecasts are scored against what happened, and it is shown only for horizons where its errors were at least 5% smaller than those of the better of a no-change forecast and repeating the same month a year earlier. The shaded band is the 80% range of those backtest errors. It is a conditional estimate that extrapolates past patterns: it does not model policy, tariffs, recessions or other shocks, and it is not an official forecast of the source agency.

How we collect, check and project every dataset →

Source

World Bank, Commodity Price Data (The Pink Sheet), monthly prices, "Copper": https://www.worldbank.org/en/research/commodity-markets — figures as published on 16 October 2026.

The 3 projected periods are a CK forecast, not figures from the source; the methodology above describes how they are made.

All data

801 observations, newest first · US$ per metric ton

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PeriodValueChange y/y
Sep 202614,474+45.0%
Aug 202614,326+48.1%
Jul 202613,543+38.6%
Jun 202613,552+37.8%
May 202613,543+42.1%
Apr 202612,951+41.1%
Mar 202612,529+28.6%
Feb 202612,951+38.8%
Jan 202613,012+44.7%
Dec 202511,785+32.2%
Nov 202510,812+19.1%
Oct 202510,740+12.6%
Sep 20259,984+8.1%
Aug 20259,670+7.8%
Jul 20259,771+4.1%
Jun 20259,835+1.9%
May 20259,533−6.0%
Apr 20259,177−3.0%
Mar 20259,740+12.1%
Feb 20259,331+12.4%
Jan 20258,991+7.8%
Dec 20248,916+6.1%
Nov 20249,076+10.8%
Oct 20249,534+20.1%

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