Goldman Sachs lowers this year's copper price forecast, expecting market oversupply to expand

Goldman Sachs said it expects a larger-scale copper surplus this year worldwide, and lowered its copper price forecast due to weaker demand growth driven by a global economic slowdown resulting from energy factors.

The firm said it now expects 490k tonnes of refined copper to be in surplus in 2026, higher than its prior forecast of 380k tonnes, and it lowered its average copper price forecast for this year from $12,850 per tonne to $12,650.

Goldman Sachs lowered its forecast for global refined copper demand growth this year from 2% to 1.6%. Previously, the firm’s economists estimated that higher energy prices could reduce the global GDP growth rate by 0.4 percentage points.

The firm said that, with production assumptions unchanged, a weak demand outlook would lead to a sharp rise in inventories. It expects markets outside the United States to come close to supply-demand balance, which would pull copper prices down by nearly 2 percentage points year over year.

In the short term, Goldman Sachs expects copper prices to remain volatile because the market is assessing the impact of heightened tensions in the Middle East on economic growth.

Assuming energy shipments through the Strait of Hormuz begin to recover in mid-April, and the U.S. Federal Reserve cuts rates twice later this year, the firm forecasts that copper prices will average $12,700 in the second quarter of this year, before easing to a reasonable value of $12,000 in the second half.

Looking beyond 2026 to 2027, Goldman Sachs maintains its view that as supply bottlenecks emerge and demand accelerates from electrification and grid investment, copper prices could rise to $15k by 2035.