Gekko

The current price of the metal may not so much predict the future of the economy as tell us what’s going on at present. “Even that’s pretty useful,” says one bond trader of my acquaintance. “We’re getting so many conflicting signals about the economy that it would help to get one indicator that would tell us where activity really is.”

Now, there has been a lot of talk about massive, clever rigging of the copper market by certain trading houses. Certainly there has been a great deal of curiosity about the activities of a Mr. Hamanaka, who until recently had a lot to say about the copper-market activities of Sumitomo. His duties were apparently reorganized recently. As one copper-industry source told me, “When the [U.S. hedge] funds heard that Hamanaka was out, they decided to liquidate before Sumitomo did.”

JD

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John Dizard

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The current price of the metal may not so much predict the future of the economy as tell us what’s going on at present. “Even that’s pretty useful,” says one bond trader of my acquaintance. “We’re getting so many conflicting signals about the economy that it would help to get one indicator that would tell us where activity really is.”

Now, there has been a lot of talk about massive, clever rigging of the copper market by certain trading houses. Certainly there has been a great deal of curiosity about the activities of a Mr. Hamanaka, who until recently had a lot to say about the copper-market activities of Sumitomo. His duties were apparently reorganized recently. As one copper-industry source told me, “When the [U.S. hedge] funds heard that Hamanaka was out, they decided to liquidate before Sumitomo did.”