Copper does not lie. It is the one commodity that economists, traders, and systems thinkers all watch for the same reason: it tells you something real about what is happening in the physical world before the macro data catches up.
When copper prints a record, it is worth paying attention to why. Not the headline reason; the headline is always a simplification. The reasons underneath it are where the signal is.
The proximate causes are well documented. Demand from the energy transition, electric vehicles, grid infrastructure, renewable generation capacity, has been structurally increasing for several years and is not slowing. Supply has not kept pace. The lead time from copper discovery to production is measured in decades, not quarters. The pipeline of new projects that were greenlit during the last price cycle is delivering, but not fast enough to close the gap that has opened.