China continues to talk down the prospect of more stimulus measures to fire-up the economy. But metals markets are betting more stimulus is on the way, with bellwether copper posting some nice gains in response. The copper price (3-month) rose by 1.18% in overnight markets on Wednesday to $US4.44/lb. That remains well short of recent record levels but is nevertheless 15% higher than last year’s average of $US3.84/lb. ANZ’s senior commodity strategy analyst Daniel Hynes said the overnight kick in the price was a response to the People’s Bank of China saying it was studying how to implement government bond trading. ... (full story)