A Chinese billionaire lonely whose golden businesses preferred became an unexpected gain that has become the largest copper bull in the country, accumulating a value bet of almost $ 1 billion in a shaking market among Betwen The.
Bian Ximing, who made an early fortune in plastic tubes before looking for a quiet life in Gibraltar, has made waves in the last two years with his investment in Chinese gold futures, betting on what argued it the concerns of the global effects and effects. His fund arrived just when Bullion began a record ascent and obtained approximately $ 1.5 billion in profits in the process, according to Bloomberg calculations.
Today, as a commercial war and the potential markets of truce, Bian and its brokerage, Zhongcai Futures Co., are responsible for the largest net position in copper contracts in the exchange of Shanghai futures, chording to the family of people with the data of the subject and the base. After 10 months of purchases, at the end of Friday there were 90,000 tons in copper futures, counting Bian’s own investment and funds that administer through Zhongcai, enough to be dwarf to any partner.
It is a position that the 61 -year -old magnate, who personally represents the participation of the lion in Zhongcai’s investment, intends to maintain, people said, even after geopolitical areas led some of their investors to retire, an expression of confidence in the metal and in the world’s largest consumer economy. People asked not to be appointed as discussions of the company are private.
“It is a fairly unique copper position that is worth following,” said Li Yiyao, vice president of the Bund of Cofco Futures Co. “reflects a very long -term uprising feeling on metal based on the foundations, which differs from the usual strategies to medium or short term that we see in the market.” He added that Bian counterintuitive movements last the worst commercial agitation, standing as many others came out, were partularly notable.
A handful of larger figures that life have dominated the Chinese products that trade with their economic tree that beg two decades ago, transforming the industry. Bian is located next to Xiang Guangda, founder of Nickel Pioneer Tsingshan, or magnates as I have Jinbi, the missing founder of Maike Metals International Co., and Ge Weidong, founder of Shanghai Chaos Investment, one of the earliest bunns.
He thought that his methodology is different from that of traditional physical merchants, his rivals and managers describe that Austera Bian has a deep modification of a market that has become increasingly difficult to read for this China outpid.
The billionaire, described by those who know him as without pretensions and direct, also stood out for his isolation, directing his team of Chinese managers and the brokerage that has touched more than two decades ago through a video call from the southern end of the Iberian Peninsula. Since he moved from East China more than a decade, attracted by the warmest climate and the proximity to European assets, Bian makes few trips home to visit his investment team and factories.
That has not prevented him from obtaining loyal monitoring in China for his online reflections on Warren Buffett in investment philosophy, deeply analyzed by any person anxious to emulate closer to a traditional western background.
A good investor must “release its own ego and be less obsessed, and then choose the right goals and be stubborn,” Bian wrote in one of his periodic publications in January. “When choosing objectives, focus on trends. When implementing projects, grant in time. When clarifying the projects, concentrate on the costs.”
Their lieutenants occasionally write their own “reflections” on the company’s site.
Bian declined to comment for this story. Zhongcai did not respond to consultations sent by email. Bloomberg used Bourse data and conversations with multiple commercial partners, rivals and other merchants to build an image of its operations and operations.
Seeing red
Bian is not just in seeing an ascending trajectory for copper, a vital industrial metal for the electrification of the world. The long -term dynamics of the energy transition and the limited supply of mines have highlighted a long leg by the bulls. Basic products merchants in recent months have been pursuing profits from Trump’s copper rate threat, which has attracted loads to US warehouses. UU. And left the rest of the short world. The Mercuria Energy Group Ltd. Metal Chief, Kostas Bintas, one of the most open reinforcements, suggested in March that copper reaches $ 12,000 or $ 13,000 per ton, well above the previous records and the current levels closest to $ 9,500.
Even so, a more volatile market has made the next movement of the metal difficult to predict, while prices at historically high levels are also testing the resilience of great physical consumers in China.
Bian has been entering and leaving copper before. The short hero positions through much of 2024, just like the rest of the world shows a more pink vision of the Chinese economy. Just before the US elections in November, it changed to an emphatic long position, in the anticipation of a Trump victory that could cause local manufacturing and Chinese economic stimulus efforts.
He accelerated his purchases from the beginning of January, for his own investment and with administered funds, with Zhongcai Holdings reaching a peak of about 40,000 lots, or 200,000 tons of metal, at the beginning of April, Excand data excitement. Later he transferred some of the runner’s positions to CME Group Comex, to capture the turbulence of the United States, two of the people familiar with their investments said. At the end of April, Zhongcai’s commitment generated a total gain of around $ 200 million, according to the Bloomberg calculation.
Okay for people, it currently does not occupy short positions in copper.
Bian has concentrated his bets in Shanghai, a movement that was finally fortunate. When copper prices fell into the letter in the midst of tariff uncertainties last month, Chinese markets closed for a national vacation, saving Bian and other merchants based in Shanghai of the sale and rebound.
Some of their investors have retreated since, two of the people, they said, shaken by the commercial war and the fears of a global recession.
But Bian has increased his own copper positions in the last month in Shanghai and beyond, the sponsors who see economic resilience in China and a continuous increase for metal tells. Rival merchants say that it is also a commitment to the change of China to an economy of greater technology and so hungry for copper, and about the wide liquuidity to support it.
The position “is not large enough to distort the market, but provides a strange vision of Bian’s strategy,” said Jia Zheng, Shanghai Shanghai Jiuying Investment Management Co.
Born in 1963, after the brutal modernization campaign of Great Leap Foring of China, Bian grew in Zhuji, a municipality in the province of Zhejiang in the East Chinese. The Cultural Revolution of Mao Zedong interrupted his education, but finally graduated from a vocational school affiliated with the Central Bank in 1985.
In 1995, when China was about to establish its ascending trajectory, it founded a factory that made high -end plastic tubes. Like many of its peers, red a wave of mass economic transformation, building an empire that goes from construction material to financial services and properties, with units in the United States, the United Kingdom and Hong Kong, and factories in India. Buy the futures corridor that became Zhongcai in Shanghai in 2003, naming it after its Holding company Zhongcai Merchants Investment Group Co. Other investments include an important participation in the Alibaba Group movie arm.
Duration in its early years in chemical and plastic derivatives, Bian was already famous for their independent commercial strategies when it was more common for others to work together to squeeze rivals that maintain opposite positions.
Not everything has gone to plan for Bian. The same flight to security that has buyer gold positions also has its capital and investments in local municipal bonds, people familiar with their holdings said, generating some losses.
“There are traps and opportunities everywhere, opportunities in risks and traps on opportunities,” Bian wrote in a blog post last year. “Investment is essential a survival game.”
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Posted on May 19, 2025
