Cash-for-copper trade grinds to a halt

Hot item: An employee works at a electricity cable factory in Baoying, Jiangsu province. Experts say without its buffer of bonded stocks, any pickup in Chinese copper demand could have an explosive effect on the market. — Reuters

SINGAPORE: For the past 15 years, the centre of gravity of the global copper market has been a row of warehouses in Shanghai’s free-trade zone where the Yangtze River meets the Pacific.

Traders from London to Lima would obsess over the flows in and out of Shanghai’s huge bonded copper stockpile.