NYSEARCA:COPX – Copper Miners ETF At $73.75 Riding A Copper Super-Cycle
COPX price, range and liquidity
NYSEARCA:COPX closed at $73.75 on December 24, just under its $74.41 52-week high and more than double its $30.75 low, implying roughly +140% appreciation off the bottom and about +114% since early 2023, materially ahead of the S&P 500 over the same period. Assets under management have expanded to about $4.57 billion from roughly $1.8B in the prior cycle, confirming sustained institutional and thematic demand for copper miners as LME copper prints record levels and U.S. copper trades just below tariff-driven summer peaks. Average daily volume near 440,000 shares, combined with a typical 0.05–0.07% bid–ask spread, makes COPX fully tradable for both large and small accounts. The trailing $0.78 distribution translates to a yield of about 1.06%, so the ETF is clearly a capital-gains vehicle rather than an income product, tightly geared to the copper price and mining earnings cycle.
What NYSEARCA:COPX owns and how the exposure is built
Global X Copper Miners ETF is a pure copper-miners basket tracking a Solactive index with 20–40 constituents, each capped around 4.75% of assets, so no single name dominates risk. Materials account for almost the entire exposure, with only a small ~2.7% sliver in Industrials, keeping the theme clean. Country allocation is led by Canada at ~38.7%, followed by China (~9.8%), the U.S. (~9.5%), Australia (~8.3%) and Japan (~6.3%), with the remainder spread across other mining jurisdictions. That means buyers of NYSEARCA:COPX are effectively long the global copper capex and production cycle, diversified across multiple listed producers and regulatory regimes. The 0.65% expense ratio is high relative to broad beta but standard for a targeted commodity miners ETF, and it has so far been more than offset by the upside leverage of miners to a strong copper tape.
Valuation reset: multiple compression despite a huge rally
Despite COPX trading near all-time highs, portfolio valuation is not at bubble territory. On one set of metrics, the basket trades around 15.4x earnings with a long-term EPS growth rate above 23%, implying a PEG ratio below 1, rare for a cyclical metals theme. Alternative data cuts show a P/E near 26x, down from roughly 30x a year earlier, while P/B has slipped from ~2.13x to ~2.03x as earnings have outpaced price. The direction is what matters: the 2025 upside came largely from earnings expansion, not just multiple inflation. For a capital-intensive, cyclical sector, a little over 2x book with structurally higher demand and improved margin outlook is acceptable. In practice, buyers of NYSEARCA:COPX at $73.75 are paying a mid-teens to mid-20s multiple for companies whose profitability has structurally rerated upward with the copper super-cycle, rather than paying tech-style valuations for peak-cycle earnings.
Price structure, momentum and the pullback risk at $73–$74
Technically, NYSEARCA:COPX sits in a textbook bull trend. Price is above the 20-, 50- and 200-day moving averages, with the 200-day rising sharply, confirming a strong primary uptrend. The long consolidation between roughly $31 and $47 from March 2023 to spring 2025 resolved into a breakout in the high $50s, with an impulsive leg into the $70+ zone. The early-October to Thanksgiving pattern formed a bull flag, whose measured move (Wave 1 from $31 to $47 = $16 added to the $57 base) implied a $73 objective – essentially where COPX now trades. RSI has spent time above 70, validating upside momentum but also signaling an overextended state versus the 200-day average. For new capital, entry at $73–$74 comes with an expectation of double-digit drawdown potential on any copper correction, even if the structural trend remains intact. This is still a buy-on-weakness and trend-following vehicle, not a low-volatility core holding.
AI data centers and energy transition as long-term copper demand engines
The core bull case for NYSEARCA:COPX is structural: copper has shifted from “just another industrial metal” to a critical input for the AI build-out and decarbonization infrastructure. Power demand from data centers is projected to rise by roughly 165% by 2030, and AI hyperscale facilities use between 3x and 10x more copper than legacy server farms due to high-density power distribution, cooling and interconnection requirements. Industry estimates point to around 400,000 metric tons of extra copper demand per year over the next decade from new data centers alone, or roughly 4.3 million tons cumulatively. Overlay the energy transition – EVs, renewables, grid reinforcement – and copper’s role becomes even more entrenched: transport’s share of copper demand is expected to climb from ~11% in 2021 to 20%+ by 2043. With supply growth lagging these trajectories, the logical consequence is a higher structural clearing price for copper and a prolonged period of elevated earnings power for the miners concentrated inside COPX.
Supply constraints, mine disruptions and margin leverage
On the supply side, the last few years have shown how fragile incremental copper production can be. Events such as the Grasberg mudslide at Freeport’s flagship mine, one of the world’s largest copper operations, removed significant tonnage and highlighted operational risk. Several assets impacted by disruptions are not expected to return to full run-rate output until 2027, and bringing new, large-scale copper projects online in tier-one jurisdictions is slow, politically contested and capital-heavy. The result is a market where record or near-record prices coexist with limited new supply, giving miners outsized pricing power and margin leverage. Within NYSEARCA:COPX, that dynamic shows up as high gross margins, positive revenue trajectories across top holdings and compressed valuation ratios despite big price gains. Unlike prior cycles where aggressive capex ultimately destroyed returns, this cycle so far shows capital discipline and constrained supply, which supports the idea of a multi-year earnings super-cycle rather than a short speculative spike.
China, tariffs, PMIs and the cyclical drag on the copper story
The structural narrative does not erase the classic cyclical risks. China remains the largest consumer of copper, and recent manufacturing PMI softness has pressured traditional industrial demand. Even so, Chinese per-capita copper stock is still roughly half that of developed markets, suggesting that the long-run build-out story is not finished. In the near term, trade and tariff uncertainty has encouraged front-loading of demand – buyers rushing to secure copper before potential new U.S. measures – which pushed prices to fresh records in 2025 but risks creating temporary oversupply and price air-pockets if policy rhetoric reverses. For NYSEARCA:COPX, that means buyers must tolerate macro headline risk: weak Chinese data, tariff rumors and growth scares can all translate into sharp corrections, even though the decade-long demand curve stays bullish. The ETF is structurally attractive but cyclically volatile.
Dollar, rates and cross-asset pressure on NYSEARCA:COPX
Another layer of risk is the behavior of the U.S. dollar and global rate complex. 2025 was generally a difficult year for the dollar, which helped all commodities, including copper. A reversal – driven by persistent high real yields or U.S. growth outperformance – would usually be negative for dollar-denominated metals, eroding copper prices in USD terms and compressing miners’ margins. Higher real yields also pressure equity valuations across cyclicals, creating a double hit to NYSEARCA:COPX: lower copper prices and lower acceptable P/E multiples. That is the environment in which COPX can move from $73–$74 down into the $60s without breaking its long-term uptrend. Sizing therefore matters: this ETF should be treated as a high-beta satellite position, with position sizes calibrated to withstand 20–25% drawdowns as a normal feature of the trade, not an outlier.
