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Welcome to Lord Copper

Opinions about lots of things - mostly related to the worlds' metal markets

Bring on the new contracts

28 July 2021

This week saw the London Metal Exchange (LME), which is still in semi-hibernation from the 16-month long Covid-induced closure of its trading floor, introduce six new contracts, largely geared towards its more environmentally responsible approach to business.

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Schrödinger's Ring?

21 July 2021

I guess most readers of this will be familiar with the thought experiment of Schrödinger’s Cat, even if, like me, as non-quantum physicists, the ability to grasp the concept fully is a tad ephemeral.

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Put the fizzy wine from north-eastern France on ice!

07 July 2021

Most of us only know Lord Acton for one notable quotation, but he was in fact an interesting man for far more than that. A confidant of Gladstone, a historian of no little standing, a part of the catholic aristocracy in Britain; in today’s febrile, social media-dominated public space, a prime candidate for cancellation.

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Will the machine stop?

23 June 2021

If I mention E M Forster, what comes to your mind? A Room with a View, Howard’s End and A Passage to India? Lush Merchant Ivory films, early twentieth-century middle and upper-middle class English social life and the last knockings of the Raj? (Incidentally, and I wasn’t ware of this, although he lived until 1970, his final novel was A Passage to India, published in 1924 - which presumably left lots of time for other things.)

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Will G7 vaccine promises help Zambia?

17 June 2021

With seagulls under instruction from Vladimir Putin to poop-bomb delegates at the G7 in Carbis Bay with drone-like accuracy, please spare a thought for Zambia.

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Muffle the lych bell!

16 June 2021

So, my expectation that the LME Ring was doomed turns out - for the moment at any rate - to be wrong. After the sounding of the passing bell and the death knell, we’ll have to put a muffler on the lych bell, as the body is in fact not approaching the churchyard and the grave.

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Compromise - not a dirty word?

09 June 2021

All being well, the LME ring will re-open for business on September 6, the bells will ring every five minutes, the screens will light up again, and what could have been the lost art of open-outcry trading will make a triumphal return.

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