Copper Mining Stocks: Belo Sun, Surge Copper & Mako Mining, Explained

What Is Copper Trading At Right Now?

Copper is quoted in two units depending on which side of the Atlantic you’re reading from: US markets (COMEX, part of CME Group) price it in cents per pound, while UK and most global benchmarks tied to the London Metal Exchange price it in US dollars per tonne. That split is why the same rally can look like two different stories. On COMEX, the front-month contract touched an all-time intraday high near $6.90/lb on August 6, 2026, before retreating to $6.59/lb the next session — a single-day move of roughly $0.12, or 1.85%, on the back of a weak US jobs report, per Investing.com. Converted to the tonne-based benchmark that Natural Resources Canada tracks, that $6.59/lb works out to roughly $14,530/tonne — well above the $9,142/tonne (about $4.15/lb) that copper averaged across the whole of 2024.

The table below lines up both units side by side, with the underlying source and date for each figure, so you’re not stuck converting in your head.

What Counts as a “Copper Mining Stock” — and Why These Three?

Not every stock that turns up under “copper mining stock” actually sells copper. Some, like Surge Copper, are single-commodity developers whose entire value depends on one deposit reaching production. Others, like Mako Mining, are diversified producers whose current revenue comes from gold and silver, with copper as a future or secondary consideration. And some, like Belo Sun, have no copper exposure at all but sit in investors’ watchlists because they trade in the same small-cap Latin American mining universe and react to the same commodity-cycle sentiment. Knowing which bucket a stock falls into before you compare its price chart to the copper price is the single most useful filter for this sector.

Belo Sun vs. Surge Copper vs. Mako Mining: The Headline Numbers

All three trade on Canadian exchanges and report in Canadian dollars (CAD). US and UK readers should convert at the moment they read a price — the Bank of Canada publishes a daily USD/CAD rate, and the Bank of England publishes a daily GBP/CAD cross — because currency movement is a real, separate source of return on top of whatever the shares themselves do. The figures below are snapshots as of August 7, 2026, 4:00 p.m. ET, sourced from stockanalysis.com’s TSX and TSX Venture data.

Belo Sun Mining (TSX: BSX): A Gold Story in a Copper Sector

Belo Sun Mining has no producing copper asset — its Volta Grande project in Pará, Brazil, is a gold development that has spent years working through Brazilian federal and state licensing after earlier permits were suspended over environmental and Indigenous-consultation concerns. As of August 7, 2026, its stock traded at $1.170 CAD, up 11.43% on the day, with a market capitalization of $650.08M CAD and a 52-week range of $0.230 to $1.640 — a swing of roughly 409% from trough to the current price. The company posted a net loss of $9.34M on the most recent reporting basis, which is typical for a pre-production developer: the share price is a bet on permitting outcomes and the gold price, not on current cash flow.

Why investors still watch it alongside copper names

Belo Sun ends up on copper-stock watchlists for two reasons that have nothing to do with copper itself. First, gold and copper miners draw from the same pool of small-cap mining investors, so capital rotates between them as risk appetite shifts. Second, Volta Grande’s Brazilian permitting saga is a live case study in the licensing risk that also affects copper developers operating in emerging markets — a slow environmental approval, a court injunction, or a change in a state mining code can stall a project for years regardless of the commodity underneath it. For Belo Sun specifically, the two things to track before the next licensing update are: (1) the status of its state-level environmental license (LI) from Pará’s environment agency, SEMAS, and (2) the federal court proceedings tied to Indigenous consultation requirements — both of which move independently of the gold or copper price.

Surge Copper (TSXV: SURG): The Only Pure Copper Bet of the Three

Surge Copper is the one name in this group whose fate is tied directly to the copper price: its Berg project in north-central British Columbia is a copper-molybdenum-silver-gold porphyry deposit that has completed a Pre-Feasibility Study, and the company holds $18.82M CAD in cash and investments against essentially no debt as of March 31, 2026. As of August 7, 2026, the stock traded at $0.57 CAD, up 7.55% on the day, with a 52-week range of $0.14 to $0.92 and a market capitalization of $221.20M CAD — up roughly 347% year over year. For deeper context on how copper futures have behaved into 2026, see our copper price analysis and futures-records coverage.

Why copper demand keeps grinding higher

Copper’s demand base is broader than the “EVs and grids” shorthand suggests. Per Natural Resources Canada’s 2024 end-use breakdown, building construction alone accounted for 26% of global copper consumption, ahead of consumer and electronic products at 23%, power and telecom infrastructure at 17%, transportation at 13%, and industrial equipment at 12%. Electrification themes (EVs, grid buildout, data-center power) sit mostly inside the transportation and infrastructure slices — meaningful, but a minority of total demand next to ordinary wiring and plumbing in buildings.

Mako Mining (TSXV: MKO): The Only One Actually Turning a Profit

Mako Mining is the outlier in this group in the most important way: it is cash-flow positive. Its San Albino gold-silver mine in Nicaragua generated 2025 revenue of $148.47M CAD, up 61.25% year over year, with net income of $33.74M CAD (up 76.17%) and earnings per share of $0.78. On a trailing-twelve-month basis, revenue reached $258.62M CAD (+77.0%) and net income $66.25M CAD (+104.4%), putting the stock on a trailing P/E of 17.02 and a forward P/E of 11.82. As of August 7, 2026, shares traded at $13.27 CAD, up 9.40% on the day, against a 52-week range of $5.70 to $13.33 and a market capitalization of $1.16B CAD.

How far each stock has moved off its 52-week low

Percentage gains off a 52-week low tell you how much risk has already been priced back out of a stock — the bigger the move, the less room there typically is for “recovery” alone to keep driving the price, and the more the next leg depends on new news. Belo Sun is up 408.7% from its 52-week low of $0.230 to $1.170; Surge Copper is up 307.1% from $0.14 to $0.57; Mako Mining, already a profitable producer, is up a comparatively modest 132.8% from $5.70 to $13.27.

Where Copper Prices Go From Here: The Supply/Demand Signal

The International Copper Study Group, the industry body that tracks global refined copper production, usage and stocks, is the most direct way to see how the supply/demand balance is shifting — and how fast forecasts themselves can move. In its October 2025 outlook, reported by Mining Weekly, ICSG projected a 2025 surplus of roughly 178,000 tonnes followed by a 2026 deficit of 150,000 tonnes, on world mine production growth of 2.3% and refined usage growth of 2.1% for 2026. By its April 2026 Copper Market Forecast, ICSG had revised that 2026 call to a surplus of 96,000 tonnes, widening to 377,000 tonnes in 2027, on slower refined usage growth (now 1.6% for 2026) and stronger secondary (recycled) output.

That six-month swing — from a 150,000-tonne projected shortfall to a 96,000-tonne projected surplus for the same calendar year — is the clearest illustration of why no single forecast, including this one, should anchor a long-term investment decision. ICSG republishes a Monthly Copper Bulletin and a full forecast update roughly twice a year; check the current edition on its site before relying on any deficit or surplus figure, including the ones above.

Separately, US trade policy has added a new variable: copper was added to the US critical minerals list in 2025, alongside silver, zinc, lead, and barite, bringing the total to 60 minerals, per Global Mining Review’s November 2025 reporting. Critical-mineral status typically brings faster permitting review and access to federal funding programs for qualifying US projects — worth checking for any North American copper developer, including Surge Copper’s British Columbia project, since Canadian projects can qualify for parallel treatment under bilateral critical-minerals arrangements.

Stress-Test the Economics Yourself: Copper Margin Calculator

Copper mining stocks live or die on the spread between the copper price and each project’s cash cost — enter your own assumptions below to see what that spread is worth on an annual and per-share basis.

Assumptions and limits: this uses a fixed 2,204.62 lb-per-tonne conversion and ignores royalties, taxes, capital expenditure, hedging, and by-product credits (such as the molybdenum, gold, and silver in Surge Copper’s Berg deposit) that materially change a real project’s economics. Use it to compare price scenarios against each other, not to value a specific company.

How Satellite Intelligence Is Changing Copper Exploration

Every stock in this article eventually depends on the same upstream question: is there enough metal in the ground to justify building a mine? Traditional exploration answers that with ground surveys and drilling programs that take years and carry real environmental footprints before a company knows whether a deposit is worth developing. Farmonaut approaches the same question from orbit: multispectral and hyperspectral satellite imagery, combined with AI-driven geospatial analysis, can flag mineral-bearing signatures — including copper-associated alteration zones — across large land packages before a single hole is drilled.

• Large-scale prospectivity mapping without mobilizing a field crew first
• Spectral signature analysis that distinguishes mineral zones, including copper-bearing alteration halos, from surrounding rock
• Zero ground disturbance at the early screening stage, ahead of any permitting requirement
• Fieldwork and drill budgets concentrated on the highest-probability targets identified from the imagery

Farmonaut’s team has worked across more than 18 countries and 13 mineral types. For a copper developer weighing where to spend a limited exploration budget — the exact position Surge Copper and every early-stage copper company is in — that kind of upfront targeting can be the difference between a drill program that finds something and one that doesn’t. Explore Farmonaut’s satellite-based mineral detection platform for the underlying methodology.

A Checklist for Verifying These Numbers Yourself

Every figure in this article carries a date because every one of them will be out of date eventually. Here’s exactly where to get a fresher number, in the order you’d typically check them:

• Live copper price: CME Group’s copper (HG) futures page for the US dollar-per-pound quote, or the London Metal Exchange’s copper contract page for the dollar-per-tonne benchmark used outside North America. Both update every trading session.
• Share prices and financials: real-time or 15-minute-delayed quotes are free on the TSX site for Belo Sun and on the TSX Venture Exchange site for Surge Copper and Mako Mining; each company’s investor-relations page links its SEDAR+ regulatory filings for the underlying financial statements.
• Global supply/demand balance: the International Copper Study Group’s Monthly Copper Bulletin and twice-yearly Copper Market Forecast — check the latest edition rather than the numbers cited here, given how much the 2026 balance alone moved between October 2025 and April 2026.
• National production and reserves: Natural Resources Canada updates its Copper Facts page annually; the US Geological Survey publishes a parallel Mineral Commodity Summaries volume each January covering US and world figures for the prior year.
• Currency conversion: convert CAD-denominated TSX/TSXV prices to USD or GBP using the Bank of Canada’s or Bank of England’s daily published rate at the moment you read a price, not a rate from this or any other article.

FAQ: Copper Mining Stocks