Chinese copper buyers used Monday’s collapse in prices below $8 500 a ton to significantly increase purchases, traders said, helping to trigger a dramatic rebound even as a rout in other global markets deepened further.

Copper prices plunged as much as 7.7% within 15 minutes of opening on the London Metal Exchange, before reversing direction to rally nearly $1 000 in a little over two hours — the largest intraday move since 2009. The trading became so frenetic that copper volumes on the LME in the second hour of trading were the highest of any hour since Donald Trump’s election in 2016.

The initial drop in prices prompted a sharp increase in buying interest from Chinese fabricators, while Chinese importers also moved to buy copper as international benchmarks plunged relative to domestic prices, according to the traders, who asked not to be identified as the information is private.

China is the world’s largest copper consumer and has a long history of stepping in to buy when prices are low. Chinese buying led recoveries in the copper price from low points in the wake of the global financial crisis in 2008 and the coronavirus pandemic in 2020.

Still, it’s unclear whether the buying spurt will be enough to reverse the slump in prices as traders rapidly adjust their expectations for global growth thanks to the unfolding trade war. Analysts at Citigroup Inc. said on Monday they expect copper to drop to $7 500 to $8 000 a ton in the short term, while analysts at Bank of America said it could fall to as low as $5,700.

For several months, traders have been redirecting copper from China to the US, as expectations of an import tariff on copper drove US copper prices to a premium and created a huge incentive to ship metal there ahead of any tariff being imposed.

Now, traders said that Chinese consumers were calling to buy metal and make up for the lost imports. The push was exacerbated by the fact that Chinese markets were closed on Friday for a public holiday when Beijing announced its response to the tariffs. That meant that Monday morning was the first opportunity Chinese buyers had to take advantage of a plunge in copper prices on the London Metal Exchange.

Before prices reversed, LME copper’s early plunge on Monday put the market on track for a drop of more than 16% in the wake of Trump’s announcement of widespread tariffs last week, in what would have been its worst three-day rout since the 2008 financial crisis. Copper in Shanghai was briefly higher than London prices by almost $1 000 a ton, signaling that it was highly profitable for traders to import the metal.

Copper premiums in China jumped to $87 a ton, the highest since December 2023. Several of the traders said they had not been able to meet all the demand from customers to buy copper because so much of the available stock had been drawn into the rush to ship to the US.