HK Stock Market Move | Copper stocks rose across the board in early trading, with officials first explicitly opposing negative processing fees. Morgan Stanley said the policy is favorable for copper prices and copper companies.

Copper stocks rose in early trading, as of the time of publication, CHINFMINING (01258) rose by 4.89% to 14.37 Hong Kong dollars; JIANGXI COPPER (00358) rose by 3.44% to 31.3 Hong Kong dollars; CMOC Group Limited (03993) rose by 3.31% to 16.56 Hong Kong dollars; MMG (01208) rose by 2.36% to 6.94 Hong Kong dollars. In terms of news, according to media reports, Chen Xuesen, Vice President of the China Nonferrous Metals Industry Association, stated at an industry conference held in Shanghai on Wednesday that negative processing fees seriously harm the interests of the global copper smelting industry, including China. Negative processing fees mean that the smelters are actually "losing money" on processing copper concentrates, a highly unusual situation that poses a challenge to the pricing benchmarks long used in the global copper industry. This is the first time that Chinese industry regulators have publicly spoken out about the chaos in the processing fees market. Morgan Stanley released a research report stating that the China Nonferrous Metals Industry Association announced that it will strictly limit new copper smelting capacity and shut down about 2 million tons of illegally constructed copper smelting capacity. If this policy is implemented, it will benefit copper prices and major copper producers. The bank expects that the share prices of Jiangxi Copper and CMOC Group Limited will rise in the next 15 days, with a probability of around 70% to 80%, and target prices of 37.3 Hong Kong dollars and 18.6 Hong Kong dollars respectively, both rated as "hold".