What’s the link between the London Metal Exchange, a little old lady and Armenia?

If you have some friends that are normal in most ways apart from a strange interest in different types of metals then head over to the website of the London Metal Exchange (LME) to get hold of some information to impress them.

The LME was established over 130 years ago and is the world’s premier non-ferrous metals market offering a range of futures and options contracts for metals.

Dig a bit deeper into the site and you’ll find some background on copper.

According to the LME, copper was first traded on the Exchange back in 1877 and was “the first mineral that man extracted from the earth and along with tin gave rise to the Bronze Age. As the ages and technology progressed the uses for copper increased.

Copper is an excellent conductor of electricity, as such one of its main industrial usage is for the production of cable, wire and electrical products for both the electrical and building industries. The construction industry also accounts for copper’s second largest usage in such areas as pipes for plumbing, heating and ventilating as well as building wire and sheet metal facings.”

I’m not sure any of this was on an elderly Georgian Lady’s mind this week when she was digging in the ground for copper to sell for scrap.

The 75 year old had been digging near the capital of Tbilisi when her spade damaged a fibre-optic cable. This cable was quite an important cable as it in effect provided 90% of the internet access for Georgia’s neighbouring country of Armenia.

The end result of this 75 year old lady’s action was that 90% of the web users in Armenia’s 3.2 million population were unable to access the internet for 5 hours. This Grandmother’s spade had cut through the cable and in essence, internet connectivity for a whole country was lost for the majority of the working day.

On Friday, copper prices were up 2% and the three-month copper prices on the LME closed at $9,875 per tonne, its highest in more than a month.

This spike in prices is reportedly nothing to do with a shortage of copper due to the little old lady being arrested and taking a break from her copper digging…