Sydney, January 8, 2026, 16:51 AEDT — Market closed
BHP Group Ltd shares ended down 0.75% at A$47.34 in Sydney on Thursday, easing after a choppy week for miners. BHP’s U.S.-listed ADR was last down 1.45% at $63.86. 1
The pullback matters because BHP sits on the fault line between two trades that have been moving fast: copper, where supply and policy headlines are pushing prices around, and iron ore, where China demand still sets the tempo. With markets closed, the next question is whether the stock can hold recent gains into BHP’s next operational update and fresh China data.
Copper’s long-run demand story got another push on Thursday, when S&P Global said global copper demand could rise 50% by 2040 to 42 million metric tons a year, while supply could fall short by more than 10 million tons annually without more mining and recycling. “The underlying demand factor here is electrification of the world, and copper is the metal of electrification,” S&P vice chairman Dan Yergin told Reuters. 2
In the near term, copper prices have been lurching higher. Benchmark three-month copper on the London Metal Exchange hit an all-time high of $13,387.50 a tonne on Tuesday, Mining.com reported, and Benchmark Minerals analyst Albert Mackenzie said the rally’s speed was stirring debate over whether speculative buying is outpacing fundamentals. 3
Policy risk is part of it. A premium for U.S. delivery has opened a tradeable price gap — an arbitrage — between Comex and the London benchmark, encouraging shipments into the United States and draining China’s “bonded” port warehouses, Reuters columnist Andy Home wrote. A decision on potential U.S. copper tariffs has been deferred until June, he said. 4
Iron ore has been firming too. The most-traded May iron ore contract on China’s Dalian Commodity Exchange rose to 801 yuan a ton on Tuesday and touched 806 yuan, its highest since late July, as steelmakers restocked ahead of the Lunar New Year holiday in February, a Reuters report said. 5
In the U.S., BHP’s ADR closed at $63.86 on Wednesday, down 1.45%, after touching $65.09 a day earlier, according to Yahoo Finance pricing data. Traders will watch whether the ADR can stabilise above the mid-$60s and make another run at this week’s high. 6
But the setup cuts both ways. If copper’s tariff-driven squeeze fades or if China’s steel demand cools after restocking, the move can unwind quickly, and BHP’s earnings expectations tend to move with those commodity curves.
