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Trafigura, IXM caught in COMEX copper brief capture as costs hit record

Commodity traders Trafigura and IXM are looking to purchase physical copper to provide versus large short positions on U.S. exchange CME where copper prices soared to tape-record highs on Wednesday, five sources with direct knowledge of the matter said.

Brief positions can be bets on lower rates or manufacturers hedging their output. A short capture takes place when celebrations holding such positions are forced to buy them back at a loss or deliver physical copper to close them out.

Copper costs on COMEX, part of the CME Group, strike a record peak of $5.1775 a pound or $11,414 a metric heap on Wednesday, a gain of 28% so far this year and 14% over the recently. They were down 0.3% at $4.9375 at 1644 GMT.

Trafigura is among the largest physical suppliers of copper to North America and provided the premium in this market we are shipping larger amounts of the metal to COMEX, the Swiss-based trader said

Geneva-based IXM, owned by China's CMOC Group, decreased to comment.

We continuously monitor our markets, which are running as developed as market individuals manage copper danger and unpredictability, the CME stated in response to a request for comment.

COMEX copper rates are expected to keep climbing up until deliveries of the metal utilized in the power and building industries from South America and Australia arrive in the United States. It could be many weeks before brief positions can be cut, the sources stated.

Copper supply, need basics in the U.S., while not unsupportive, probably don't validate such extremes, suggesting something else is taking place in the paper market, said CRU expert Robert Edwards.

Swiss-based commodity trader IXM is one of the world's. largest traders of physical non-ferrous metals.

Trafigura has asked some copper producers to divert May and. June deliveries to the United States, the sources stated. However. altering location at brief notification is incredibly hard.

The COMEX copper rally has outpaced gains on the London. Metal Exchange (LME) and created an arbitrage. chance, when copper producers and traders offer commodities. in various places to take advantage of rate differentials.

We think arb-related and straight-out brief covering has. sustained COMEX gains which are likely unsustainable: redirection. of physical systems to the United States need to relieve the arb dislocation, however. this will take a while, Citi experts said in a note.

Copper costs on the LME are trading around $10,240 a ton.

Taking into consideration expenses such as freight and insurance,. traders can make around $300 a load by taking copper from the LME. system and providing it to the CME, one source stated.

Nevertheless, the issue is half of the offered copper in LME. signed up storage facilities is of Russian origin and can not be. delivered into the CME system.

Somewhere else, numerous Chinese copper importers had actually redirected. shipments to the United States, according to two of the sources.

However copper cathode from China, which heats about half of. the world's copper, can not be provided versus COMEX contracts.