(Bloomberg) Hedge-funds including Winton Capital Management are buying copper on speculation China will purchase the metal to cover wrong-way bets by a government trader.
Speculators helped send prices to a record high this month, saying China may need to buy as much as 200,000 tons of copper to cover losing trades by Liu Qibing. China’s losses may run into hundreds of millions of dollars and are the result of Liu’s personal actions, not those of the government, according to the state-run China Daily.
“We’ve been long all the way up the bull market so far, and the bull market is still on as far as we’re concerned,” according to David Harding, a principal at London-based Winton Capital Management. The fund, with $4 billion under management, is up 6 percent this month as copper rose.
