Copper Is at a Record High. The Best Copper Stocks for the Run, Ranked by 15 Years of Data

Research note. Computed from the IMF global copper price (monthly since 1992) and daily closes in our maintained price database for every US-listed name in the screen. The correlation screen and the 2011–2016 bust study are frozen through August 14, 2026; copper readings, the run scoreboard and both charts keep updating. Company facts cite filings and primary reporting linked in the sources box. See How we checked it. One note on how we use AI.

What the record actually looks like

Copper spent fourteen years failing at one level. The 2011 supercycle peak near $9,900 a tonne, the 2022 spike to $10,231 — every approach stalled and rolled over. The current move went through that ceiling in 2025 and kept going: the IMF monthly average printed $13,552 in June 2026, a record for the series and roughly a third above the old high. The climb from the October 2023 trough ran 71% with barely a down month. Spot prices on the LME crossed $14,000 earlier this year, per IEA commentary — our monthly-average series runs cooler than any given day’s print.

The push came from both sides of the ledger. Supply broke: the September 2025 mud incident at Freeport’s Grasberg (the world’s second-largest copper mine) forced a force majeure and phased restart, and earthquake-related flooding hit Ivanhoe’s Kamoa-Kakula complex in the DRC. J.P. Morgan put the 2026 refined deficit around 330,000 tonnes. Demand, meanwhile, stopped being a China-only story: grid buildouts, AI data centers (industry estimates run 40,000–50,000 tonnes of copper per large campus) and electric vehicles, which use three to four times the copper of a combustion car. Washington added a third force — 50% Section 232 tariffs on semi-finished copper products took effect in August 2025, with a phased tariff on refined copper planned for 2027–28. A record price is the market’s way of saying none of this resolves quickly.

How we picked the names: a screen

“Best copper stocks” lists are usually someone’s favorites. We started from the other end: take every US-listed stock in our 5,500-symbol database with a market cap above $2 billion — 1,901 names — and compute each one’s monthly-return correlation and beta to the copper price since 2011, requiring at least three years of overlap. The result is a ranking of the entire market by how much of each stock’s month actually moves with the metal, and the top of the list is exactly who you would hope: Taseko first of 1,901 (0.51 correlation, 2.0 beta), Hudbay second, Southern Copper and Freeport in the top five.

The screen also catches things a favorites list would hide. Alcoa ranks third — aluminum and copper share a macro pulse. Vale, ArcelorMittal and a clutch of Canadian banks and emerging-market ADRs score in the 0.3s, because a correlation net catches the whole global-growth trade rather than copper alone. That is worth knowing before buying a “copper stock”: part of what you own is simply world-industrial beta. The names below are the ones where the copper linkage is also operational — they mine it, process it, or sell the machines and gear the boom pays for.

The miners: direct price torque

Freeport-McMoRan (FCX) — the recovery trade

The largest US-listed pure copper producer, fifth of 1,901 on the screen (0.44 correlation, 1.5 beta). The reason it is interesting now is the reason it has lagged: since the October 2023 copper trough FCX is up +127.0%, only modestly ahead of SPY, while copper rose 71% and the small-cap miners multiplied several times over. Grasberg’s September 2025 incident took its biggest asset partly offline; the company guides 2026 output around 800 million pounds of copper cathode from the district, ramping toward an average near 1.6 billion pounds a year for 2027–29 as the block cave returns. If that restart lands into a still-record copper price, the earnings recovery is mechanical. If the ramp slips again, 2026 already showed what that does to the stock. Highest-torque large cap on the list, in both directions.

Southern Copper (SCCO) — scale without the drama

Fourth on the screen at 0.44 correlation but with a beta below 1 — SCCO tracks copper’s direction with less of the violence. Its Peru and Mexico operations sit at the low end of the industry cost curve, which is why it was also the mildest miner in the 2011–2016 bust: down 52% when peers lost 88–96%. Up +233.2% this run. The trade-off is jurisdiction concentration in two countries and a valuation that already knows all of this. The steady-hand pick if you want copper exposure you can hold through the swings.

Teck Resources (TECK) — the merger arb on a copper champion

Teck sold its coal business and re-centered on copper, and then the story got bigger: a $53 billion merger of equals with Anglo American, announced September 2025, approved by both shareholder bases in December with Canadian clearance granted the same month. China and South Korea approvals are the remaining gates, with a closing window running roughly September 2026 to March 2027. The combined company would rank among the world’s five largest copper producers with roughly 8% of global mine supply. Holding TECK here is two positions in one: copper, plus completion risk on a deal that would create the sector’s flagship. It has lagged the group this run (+95.8%) — deal stocks usually do until the deal closes.

Hudbay Minerals (HBM) — the mid-cap gearing

Second of 1,901 on the screen: 0.47 correlation, 1.8 beta. Peru and Manitoba production plus the Copper World development project in Arizona, and the run shows what that gearing does — up +589.4% since October 2023, roughly six times SPY’s gain. The bust table shows the mirror image: −88% in 2011–16. Mid-cap miners are the closest thing to a leveraged copper position that still files 10-Ks. Size accordingly.

Taseko Mines (TGB) — the purest torque in the market

The single most copper-correlated $2B+ stock in the US market, and the timing is unusually concrete: Taseko’s Florence project in Arizona produced its first copper cathode in February 2026 and is targeting 30–35 million pounds this year as the wellfield ramps — new, low-cost, domestic production arriving into record prices and a tariff wall. The stock is up +750.9% since the copper trough, the best of anything on this page. It is also a ~$2.6B company whose history includes a −96% bust decade. This is the sharp end of the thesis; nobody should mistake it for ballast.

Ivanhoe Electric (IE) — the option on the next decade

The one pick the run has left behind (+10.1% while the group multiplied, about −43.4% from its 52-week high) — because it does not produce copper yet. Its Santa Cruz project in Arizona, on private land, has a feasibility study outlining roughly 72,000 tonnes of cathode a year for its first 15 years, first production targeted for 2029, with construction financing in progress. If the 5–10 year copper thesis is right, an unbuilt US mine is exactly the asset that re-rates; until then it burns cash and trades on sentiment. This is the only name here whose case rests entirely on the future.

The diversified route: BHP and Rio Tinto

If single-mine risk is the objection, the majors are the answer, at the cost of purity. BHP operates Escondida in Chile, the world’s largest copper mine, inside a portfolio where iron ore still pays the dividends; Rio Tinto’s Oyu Tolgoi underground expansion in Mongolia is one of the few new large-scale copper sources this decade, alongside its US Resolution project that has spent twenty years in permitting. Both screen in the top 1% of the market on copper correlation (0.36–0.37) with betas well under 1. You give up the torque — both are up around 50% this run, under a third of the miners ETF's gain — and you keep a balance sheet that survives the busts.

The indirect tier: the copper economy around the metal

A reader pushed us past the miners: who benefits indirectly? The screen gives an honest, slightly deflating answer — the correlation falls off fast once you leave the mine gate. Mueller Industries 0.22, Caterpillar 0.29, Eaton 0.12, Hubbell 0.02. These are not copper-price plays. They are plays on the things driving copper demand, which is a different and in some ways better bet.

Mueller Industries (MLI) makes copper tube, fittings and rod in US plants, and the 2025 tariff order put a 50% wall around exactly its product set (semi-finished copper), while its raw-material inputs stay exempt for now. The bust table is the tell: through 2011–16, while every miner on this page lost half or more, Mueller gained 82% — fabricators earn spreads and volumes, not metal prices. Up +235.2% since October 2023. Caterpillar (CAT) is the mining-capex cycle itself: record copper prices become mine expansions become equipment orders, and it screens 81st of 1,901 — industrial, but copper-adjacent. Eaton (ETN) is the demand story with almost no metal exposure at all (0.12 correlation): electrical gear for the grid and data-center buildout that is pulling the copper in the first place. If copper collapsed tomorrow on a supply flood, Eaton’s order book would barely notice — which is precisely the point of holding it instead of a miner.

The scoreboard, live

The part that should scare you: 2011 happened

The last time copper set a record — February 2011, $9,881 on this same series — the metal then fell 55% over five years. The miners did not fall 55%. Freeport fell 92%. Teck fell 95%. Taseko fell 96%, Hudbay 88%, the COPX ETF 85%, while SPY gained 44% over the same stretch. Every property that makes miners wonderful in the up-cycle — operating leverage, financial leverage, single-asset concentration — ran in reverse for half a decade. That is not a tail scenario; it is simply what the last cycle did, and it is why the diversified and indirect tiers exist on this page. The one exception in the table is the one that proves the structure: Mueller, the fabricator, made money straight through the metal’s bear market.

The failure marker for the current breakout is explicit and checkable on our copper page: the IMF monthly average falling back below the old March 2022 record near $10,231 would mean the fourteen-year ceiling held after all, and the 2011 playbook — not this page’s — becomes the base case. Short of that, the things to watch are supply normalization (Grasberg is targeted to approach full output around the end of 2027; Kamoa-Kakula’s recovery), the US refined-copper tariff decision now penciled for 2027–28, and whether AI data-center capital budgets keep growing. This is our forward framing of disclosed facts, not settled research — and none of it is individual investment advice.

How we checked it

The screen takes every US-listed stock in our database above $2 billion in market value — 1,901 names — and asks one question per stock: over the months since 2011 (or since listing), how tightly did its monthly returns move with the copper price? Correlation answers “how reliably,” beta answers “how hard.” We required at least three years of overlap. Copper is the IMF’s global monthly average price, which smooths daily spikes and publishes about two months behind — so “record” here means a record monthly average, a stricter bar than a record intraday print. Run returns measure from the copper price’s October 2023 monthly trough; the bust study measures each stock from February 2011, copper’s prior record month, to mid-January 2016, its low. Company facts — Grasberg’s restart, the Anglo-Teck approvals, Florence’s first cathode, Santa Cruz’s timeline, the tariff orders — come from filings and the primary reporting linked in the sources box, checked August 14, 2026.

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