When copper demand & thus prices climbing that represent a bull market or economic growth. Conversely, when copper demand and thus copper prices declining that representative of a bear market forming, towards a global recession it seems according to many economic forecasting analysts. Let us take a look at why Copper such a string indicator of economic progress or declines.
Copper used in most high value applications to move electricity and heat. Global copper mining produces ~ 21 million tons of virgin copper while scrapping & recycling copper produces another ~ 8 million tons.
Copper in Electricity Production & Distribution
In Electronics
In Rocket Motors
In Power Wires
As Heatsinks to cool hot chips and chipsets, CPU, GPU, PS & MB
In mining rigs to that hash out bitcoin & similar cryptocurrencies
In internet servers & cloud computer & elastic cloud computer
In software as a service infrastructure
In content distribution systems
In telecom TV & content streaming
In radio transmission antenna, cables and equipment
In satellites and the ground stations
In cookware, pots and pans to evenly move heat, often clad with stainless steel or aluminum
In quarts wrist watches to move power from the battery to the copper windings in the electric movement driver motor. In cameras of all kinds, especially in smartphones. In smartwatches & other wearable technology, in our smart clothing & heated winter riding gear, for space heating & in instant hot water heaters.
Copper can move electrical current & heat & often utilized this way in power tooling & similar equipment, just as plastics can form electrically insulating housing of the tool, something Black & Decker pioneered & first features in DeWalt tools.
In automobiles, cars, trucks & SUV's, the latest with ADAS & self-driving features that are literally 4G-LTE or 5G-NR enhanced rolling data centers, especially given all the camera, LIDAR, radar & other mixed signal analog circuit data & AI processing happening & in the computerized engine controllers or in electric motors & motor controllers in popular battery electric vehicles like the Tesla Model 2 or Tesla Model Y or Nissan LEAF, in the charging cables & batteries. Copper everywhere.
In antimicrobial fabrics, sheets & bedding, copper bactericidal by nature, like silver, but less expensive.
As the heatsink liner section in the rocket nozzles of the latest SPACEX or Blue Origin rocket engines.
Copper in LED lights, fluorescent ballasts, HID ballasts, sodium vapor, mercury vapor, metal halide, short arc xenon, halogen, & other lamp or bulb or artificial lighting technology & products.
In domestic, commercial, and industrial buildings, stranded & solid copper wires form the basis of alternating current distribution to power outlets, appliances, lighting, computers, phone chargers, power tools, often to charge batteries in electric vehicles over Level 1 or Level 2 charging. In telecom, copper wires are the basis of basic wired phone service, mostly converted to VOIP by Comcast multifunction cable models for customers with a Triple Play Xfinity package.
With exceptional thermal conductivity or the ability to move heat energy, copper used in heatsinks applied inside smartphones, laptops, desktop computers, servers, mining rigs, graphics cards & a variety of other compute elements and devices, copper also excellent at moving low voltage direct current or DC in such things as the trace paths on the mainboard logic, on RAM chips, especially in the power supply or power adapter that converts 100-240 vac to 12 vdc or 20 vdc or 5 vdc or 3.3 vdc so that the chipset can toggle billions of semiconductor transistor switches at billions of cycles per second to hurl data around at breakneck speeds so that you can play CS:GO via STEAM on your gaming laptop or shop on Amazon.com, Alibaba, Ebay or other e-commerce sites, so that you can stream Hulu, Netflix or YouTube videos, so that you can Google Search or do all sorts of other online activities like reading DIY articles or blogs like mine blog priusblack.blogspot.com or others. The internet can be a university for many people with wikipedia.com or Branch Education's YouTube Channel.
Servers hosting this blog & elastic cloud computers that fuel Fusion 360 CAD, to crypto mining, all of these would be impossible without billions of tons of copper and trillions of kilowatts of electricity continually flowing from power generating Fission Reactors, Geothermal Power, Tidal Power, Wave Power, Hydroelectric Dams, from Solar PV farms, Wind Power Turbines, coal power plants, natural gas generation, & similar carbon combustion thermal solution. In this industrial power generators, copper plays a vital role in creating the electromagnetic flux that converts rotational energy created by steam turbines into electrical energy by forcing large, energized electromagnet rotors through similar electrically energizes stationary stators, to creative medium voltage AC at immense wattage that is bumped up to HVAC with large power multiplying transformers for long distance powerline energy transmission networks that pump electricity to your local utility company, where smaller lower & medium voltage lines made of aluminum & copper bring the electricity to pole mounted or ground mounted step down transformers, for 220 ac in Europe & Asia or 110 ac in America, where a 200 amp service panel with dual 120 v legs of hot AC can be combined to make 240vac for clothing dryers & ovens, which again contain copper as the current moving metal, inside non-conductive insulator covered wires of black & red hot, white neutral & bare or green wires for ground.
You can tell after reading about coppers applications, that copper used in so many products and services, that copper demand & copper prices are strong indicators of global economic progress.
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