The whole industrial metals complex was on the back foot last week as fears of Chinese slowdown fanned out from collapsing iron ore and steel markets in China.
But a 50 percent increase in headline stocks to 354,650 tonnes and a doubling of on-warrant stocks to 243,300 tonnes didn't exactly help sentiment either.
Which was the point.
Because over recent months LME copper stocks have become a battleground for two competing market narratives.
Price signals have become polarised as bear and bull fight it out in the physical market place.
Lost in the resulting fog of war is one genuinely interesting stocks development taking place away from this LME battlefield.
Last week's LME stocks surge was almost a carbon copy of a similar flurry of warranting at the start of March, when 141,625 tonnes were delivered into the system in the space of four days.
Once again, most of the activity took place at Asian locations.
Singapore, South Korea's Busan and Taiwan's Kaohsiung all featured heavily with some inflow also registered in Europe at Rotterdam, mirroring the distribution of March's inflow.
Once again, the sheer tonnage argues against these being actual "arrivals" of copper. Rather, it was in all likelihood metal that was already sitting in warehouse awaiting the push of the warranting button.
Some of it has quite possibly come from the handful of Chinese smelters authorised to engage in tolling contracts, converting concentrates into refined metal which can be exported without paying the 15 percent export duty.
China exported 426,000 tonnes of refined copper last year, still a fraction of what it imports but the largest ever outflow. Another 105,000 tonnes were exported in the first quarter with South Korea and Taiwan the two top destinations.
The exact origin, however, is of secondary importance to the point being made, namely that there is a lot of free-float copper, particularly in Asia, which should mean lower prices.
Except that what has just arrived in the LME system is unlikely to stay there long.
LME open tonnage, meaning that not earmarked for physical load-out, more than doubled from 88,750 tonnes to 194,825 tonnes after those early-March "arrivals".
By the end of April it had fallen back to 121,250 tonnes thanks to a steady flow of cancellations and then physical drawdowns of stock.
This is how the game works.
Whatever the bear throws at the system, the bull soaks up and physically removes.
This tug-of-stocks-war has actually been playing out a long time. It's just that the stakes are rising all the time.
The market was shocked by the appearance of 65,550 tonnes in the LME system in a single week in June 2016.
These days, it seems, you need twice that sort of tonnage to make your point.
Indeed, last week's inflow was as large as most analysts' calculated global market balances this year.
Bear and bull, however, are cancelling themselves out in this stocks war.
The LME headline copper stocks figure is currently up by a net 39,725 tonnes on the start of the year, a fairly modest build by "normal" seasonal standards, albeit one that has resulted from some violent monthly swings.
Copyright Reuters, 2017