Focusing on copper prices, a team of Goldman analysts led by Eoin Dinsmore told clients on Monday that the industrial metal is entering a new structural price range of $10,000 to $11,000 per ton.

Dinsmore's thesis is clear:

We believe that the copper price is resetting in a new range of $10,000-$11,000/t - a range copper has never held for longer than two months - as resource constraints and structural demand growth from critical sectors set a new price floor from 2026 onward. We lift our 2026 copper price forecast to $10,500/t (from $10,000) following the Grasberg outage, also supported by U.S. Fed rate cuts and further U.S. dollar depreciation, and maintain our $10,750/t 2027 forecast.

While we are bullish on copper prices vs. historical averages and the 2027 forwards, we believe that there is a ceiling at $11,000 for the coming two years. The copper market is currently in a modest surplus, which we expect to be maintained in 2026, even after a significant drop in global refined output following recent mine disruptions. We do not see a deficit materialising until the end of the decade.

The commodity analyst outlined three reasons why copper should trade in the $10,000 to $11,000 range through 2027:

Mine supply is constrained, but enough to meet demand for now: Multiple recent mine incidents highlight the growing structural challenges in copper mining as copper mines get deeper, grades get lower and ore gets harder, requiring greater investment. This caps our mine supply growth forecast at an annual average of +1.5% YoY in 2025-30. While high copper prices are already delivering investment in China, DR Congo, Russia, and Uzbekistan, which we believe will be enough to meet demand over the next two years, a price above $10,500 is needed to incentivise investment in brownfield South American mines, required to balance the market later in the decade. Meanwhile, we expect a pick up in copper scrap use to help delay any deficit in the copper market until later in the decade, likely limiting copper price upside beyond $11,000/t in 2026/27.