A foot of 500 kcmil copper holds $9.48 of metal at the $6.14 a pound the IMF recorded for July 2026. The distributor who sells it priced it off a COMEX open of $6.28 that month, so the same foot was $9.70 before insulation, margin or freight. The Copper and Wire Price Sheet launches today as version 0.1 to put those two numbers, and the conductor weights that turn a pound into a foot, in one place with a source on every cell. It is a compilation of public series and code tables, refreshed every Monday, and it carries an escalation-clause calculator so a bid can name the index it will move with.
This piece sets out what the sheet publishes, the exact method from the FRED series to $/ft by NEC conductor size, why the default is an LME-based price and what that means for a US bid, how a distributor bulletin is logged, who the sources are by name, what the sheet cannot tell you yet, and what version 1 adds.
Source: IMF global copper price via FRED PCOPPUSDM via Open Factory Copper and Wire Price Sheet; Federal Register (EO 14220, Proclamations 10962 and 11021)
The monthly series bottomed at $2.03 a pound in January 2016, averaged $2.73 in 2019 and $4.15 in 2024, and ran from $4.43 in July 2025 to $6.14 in July 2026, a 38.6% rise in twelve months that the sheet prints as twelve monthly cells and nothing in between.
What the Sheet Publishes Every Monday
Version 0.1 publishes four things. First, a copper and an aluminum reference price in $/lb, converted from the IMF’s global price series in $/tonne at 2,204.62 lb per tonne; July 2026 is $13,543 a tonne for copper and $3,158 for aluminum, which is $6.14 and $1.43 a pound. Second, a price sheet of bare metal value in $/ft and $/kft for thirteen NEC conductor sizes, #4 AWG to 600 kcmil in copper and 4/0 AWG to 900 kcmil in aluminum, each with its 75°C ampacity beside it. Third, an escalation-clause calculator that takes the conductor line price at bid, the index on the bid date and on the PO date, the copper content in pounds or as a share of the line, and a deadband, and returns the adjustment. Fourth, a log of distributor commodity bulletins, fourteen rows from Border States between July 2025 and August 2026, with the COMEX and aluminum opening prices each bulletin printed.
Every input is mirrored to the URL, so a scenario is a link: enter the COMEX settlement and the conductor, copy the link, and the estimator who opens it sees the same $/ft and the same adjustment. The sheet does not publish a finished wire price, and it says so on every result: metal value is a third to a half of what 12 AWG THHN costs at the counter and most of what 600 kcmil costs. The Public Bid-Tab Price Book is the model the sheet is built on, and finished THHN and MC cable bands from public awards arrive there, not here, when the cell rules are met.
The Reference Price Is LME and Your Bid Clears on COMEX
The default copper price is the IMF’s global copper price as published by the St. Louis Fed’s FRED, series PCOPPUSDM, a monthly average of the LME cash price for grade A cathode, in US dollars per metric ton. The aluminum default is the sibling series PALUMUSDM. We chose them because they are free, documented, dated and identical for every reader. They are monthly, and the sheet treats them as monthly. The July 2026 cell is one number, $6.14, from the first of the month to the last, and the sheet does not interpolate it to a weekly print. When FRED posts August, the sheet posts August. Between releases the Monday refresh re-reads the series, re-reads the PPI and adds any new bulletin to the log; the reference price changes only when the source does.
The problem with an LME basis is that US building wire is priced off COMEX, and since the copper Section 232 action the two have diverged. The copper tariff piece compiled the COMEX premium over LME from exchange reporting in the press: about $2,937 a tonne in late July 2025 when a duty on all copper was feared, $130 through mid-September after refined copper was exempted, and close to $1,000 for the December 2026 contract by mid-August 2026. The sheet does not carry a COMEX series; CME’s settlement data is licensed, and a free delayed quote is not a series anyone can cite in a contract. So the sheet states the gap instead, prints the LME-based default beside a field that says “enter the COMEX settlement of the day”, and shows the gap as the distributor reports it.
Source: Open Factory Copper and Wire Price Sheet (compiled from Border States Commodity Updates via tED magazine, Jul 2025 to Aug 2026; IMF via FRED PCOPPUSDM)
Border States printed a COMEX open of $5.45 on July 14, 2025 against an IMF monthly average of $4.43, a $1.02 gap in the week the market priced a tariff on all copper; the gap was $0.01 in February and March 2026, $0.02 in April, and then $0.14, $0.16 and $0.14 in May, June and July as the refined-copper question reopened. A daily open against a monthly mean is an indicative gap, not a settlement spread; it is also the only free, dated, distributor-printed COMEX record we have found, which is why the sheet logs it.
The tariff itself is stated with its instruments, because the sheet’s users write contracts. Proclamation 10962 of July 30, 2025 put 50% on semi-finished copper products and intensive copper derivatives from August 1, 2025, and left refined copper out, the content rule the Tariff Bill of Materials worked through a UPS, a lineup and a Megapack; Proclamation 11021 of April 2, 2026 applied the duty to full customs value from April 6, 2026; the investigation began with Executive Order 14220 of February 25, 2025. The Tariff Exposure Calculator carries each instrument by HTS line with its Federal Register citation, and the September 2026 tariff schedule has the metals stack at 50, 25, 15 and 10 percent; the sheet links to those and does not restate the rates.
From a Pound to a Foot
Metal value per foot is conductor metal weight in pounds per thousand feet, times the metal price in $/lb, divided by 1,000. The weight is computed, not read from a catalog. NEC Chapter 9 Table 8 gives the conductor area in circular mils for every size: 41,740 for #4 AWG, 133,100 for 2/0, 211,600 for 4/0, and the kcmil sizes are their own area. One kcmil of cross-section over 1,000 ft is 9.425 cubic inches; copper at 8.89 g/cm³ is 0.3212 lb per cubic inch, so a kcmil-kft of copper weighs 3.027 lb, and aluminum at 2.70 g/cm³ weighs 0.919 lb. Stranded conductors carry about 2% more metal than the nominal area because each strand spirals around the axis, so the sheet multiplies by 1.02. The result is 411 lb per kft for 2/0 copper, 653 for 4/0, 1,544 for 500 kcmil and 1,853 for 600 kcmil; 4/0 aluminum is 198 lb and 900 kcmil aluminum 844.
Source: Open Factory Copper and Wire Price Sheet (compiled from NEC Chapter 9 Table 8 areas, copper density 8.89 g/cm³, IMF via FRED PCOPPUSDM, Border States via tED; as of Aug 2026)
At the 2024 average of $4.15, 2/0 copper carried $1.71 of metal a foot and 600 kcmil $7.69; at the sheet’s July 2026 default of $6.14 they are $2.52 and $11.38; at the $6.60 COMEX open Border States printed on August 10, 2026 they are $2.71 and $12.23, so the LME-to-COMEX choice is worth $0.19 a foot on 2/0 and $0.85 on 600 kcmil that week. Ampacities in the 75°C column come from Cerrowire’s chart, which reproduces NEC 310.16 on a 2017 basis: 175 A for 2/0 copper, 230 A for 4/0, 380 A for 500 kcmil, 420 A for 600. The 900 kcmil aluminum row has no ampacity in the sheet because Cerrowire’s chart stops at 750, and we print a blank rather than a number we did not source.
Two cautions travel with the weights. They have not yet been checked against a Southwire or Encore spec sheet, which state bare conductor weight to the pound; expected agreement is within 2%, and the version history will record the check. And they are bare metal: a 500 kcmil THHN conductor weighs more than 1,544 lb per kft once the PVC and nylon are on, and the sheet does not price insulation.
The Escalation Calculator, With the Numbers In
The clause the calculator applies is the one published in the copper tariff piece, on the ConsensusDocs 200.1 form: the conductor line is priced at the COMEX front-month settlement on the bid date, applied to a stated number of pounds of copper content per the attached schedule, and if the settlement on the PO date differs from the bid price by more than 5%, the line moves by the full difference times the pounds, in either direction, with no markup on the adjustment. The calculator does exactly that arithmetic. Adjustment equals index at PO minus index at bid, times pounds; if the move is inside the deadband the adjustment is zero; if you have the line price and the copper share but not the pounds, pounds equals line price times share divided by the index at bid.
Take 1,000 conductor feet of 500 kcmil copper, 1,544 lb, bid on February 9, 2026 at the $5.88 COMEX open Border States printed that morning and released to PO on July 13 at $6.28. The move is 6.8%, outside a 5% deadband, so the line rises by $0.40 times 1,544 lb, or $618 on $9,079 of metal at bid. The trigger at $5.88 was a $0.29 move. A 400 A feeder in parallel 3/0 over 100 ft holds 414 lb and moves $166 on the same dates; a fixed-price bid signed in February ate that, and a bid with the clause billed it, in both directions. The clause needs the copper content in pounds, and the sheet prints the pounds for any conductor schedule, which is the one number most bids do not carry.
Two public documents show a clause without an index. The Eaton terms Silicon Valley Power filed in January 2026 reserve the right to invoice at prices in effect at shipment regardless of any prior bid, with no index, base date or cap; the City of Ocala autotransformer order carried a seller-chosen PPI escalator that added $744,800, 9.2% of the contract. The calculator is the buyer’s version: name the series, the base date, the pounds and the deadband, and the number is arithmetic anyone can check.
The Wire Index Beside the Metal
The sheet carries one price that is not metal: the BLS producer price index for copper wire and cable, WPU10260314, because it is the only public series of what US mills actually charged for finished conductor. It stood at 578.2 in July 2026, up 17.9% on July 2025 and 95% on December 2019.
Source: BLS PPI WPU10260314 and IMF via FRED PCOPPUSDM, via Open Factory Copper and Wire Price Sheet
From January 2015 to July 2026 the metal index went from 100 to 232 and the wire index from 100 to 198; the wire index sat above the metal from mid-2022 to mid-2024, when copper fell and mills held price, and below it from 2025, when copper ran faster than mills could reprice. The gap is the mill’s and distributor’s margin moving, and the switchgear cost decomposition used the same two series to show copper up 70% and switchgear PPI up 78% since January 2021. The sheet prints the PPI as a monthly index beside the monthly metal price, as the Lead-Time Monitor prints the transformer and switchgear PPIs, and neither pretends an index is a price.
How a Distributor Bulletin Is Logged
Southwire and Encore price letters do not reach the public; distributor commodity bulletins do, and Border States publishes one on the second Monday of each month that tED magazine, the NAED’s trade title, reprints in full. Each bulletin prints the COMEX copper opening price and the US delivered aluminum opening price that morning, and reports any wire price action suppliers announced. We log one row per bulletin: date, both opening prices, the IMF monthly average for the same month for comparison, the action, and the tED URL. Fourteen bulletins from July 2025 to August 2026 are in the log; thirteen carry a copper price, and the November 2025 reprint carried none, which the row says.
Source: Open Factory Copper and Wire Price Sheet (compiled from Border States Commodity Updates via tED magazine, Jul 2025 to Aug 2026; IMF via FRED PCOPPUSDM)
CSV: data/distributor-bulletin-log.csv
Two rows are dated price actions: finished aluminum goods up 7% to 10% on March 9, 2026 and copper suppliers up 7.5% on July 10, 2026. One row is a count that no other public source carries: the January 12, 2026 bulletin reports 27 price increases for copper wire and six for aluminum wire during 2025, against a 2025 COMEX average of $4.82, 60 cents above 2024. Twenty-seven increases is one every 13 days, the cadence a fixed-price bid is exposed to. A row is logged only from the reprinted bulletin, never from a call or a screenshot, and every row says “Border States” because it is one distributor’s view of the market, not the market.
The aluminum column of the log is the Midwest Premium made visible. The sheet’s aluminum default is the LME-based IMF price, $1.43 a pound in July 2026, and Border States opened aluminum at $2.53 that month, because US delivered aluminum carries the premium under the 50% Section 232 aluminum tariff.
Source: Open Factory Copper and Wire Price Sheet (compiled from Border States Commodity Updates via tED magazine; IMF via FRED PALUMUSDM)
The gap was $0.68 in July 2025, crossed $1.00 in February 2026 and reached $1.27 in June 2026 when US delivered aluminum opened at $2.83 against an LME month of $1.56, so an aluminum feeder priced off the sheet’s default understates US metal by 70 to 80%, and the sheet’s aluminum field says to enter the delivered price for the same reason the copper field says to enter COMEX. The aluminum substitution math for a 400 A feeder is in the copper tariff piece, and the imported-rod duty is in the Tariff Exposure Calculator.
Every Field and Its Source
Source: Open Factory Copper and Wire Price Sheet, version 0.1 (compiled from IMF via FRED, BLS PPI, NEC Chapter 9 Table 8, Cerrowire, Border States via tED)
Ten fields, and the sources by name are the International Monetary Fund and the Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis for the metal prices, the Bureau of Labor Statistics for the PPI, the National Fire Protection Association for NEC Chapter 9 Table 8, Cerrowire for the ampacity table, Border States Electric and tED magazine for the bulletins, CME Group’s COMEX for the settlement the sheet asks you to enter, ConsensusDocs for the 200.1 form, and the Federal Register for the tariff instruments. The Lead-Time Monitor launch and the Bid-Tab Price Book launch describe their compilations the same way; the OEM Disclosure Scorecard grades who publishes at all.
Known Gaps
The sheet has no finished-cable price. Metal value per foot is not a THHN, XHHW or MC cable price; drawing, insulation, jacket, reel, mill margin and distributor margin sit on top, and the share they take falls as the conductor grows. On 12 AWG the copper is about 20 lb per kft, so at $6 copper the metal is $121 of a counter price near $300; on 600 kcmil the metal is most of the price. The sheet says this in the method note under every result and prints no counter price, because we have none we can source.
The sheet has no distributor net price. Graybar’s 2025 gross margin was 19.3% and WESCO’s 21.1%, both blended across every product line, and neither says what a contractor pays for 500 kcmil on a Tuesday. The Public Bid-Tab Price Book will publish wire lines from municipal and utility bid tabulations, by conductor size and award date with n, once a cell has five or more awards; nothing prints before that.
The sheet has no COMEX series, only a field and a log of one distributor’s opening prices, which are not settlements. The conductor weights are unchecked against a mill sheet, the 900 kcmil aluminum ampacity is blank, and the reference price is a month old on the day it posts, because the IMF publishes after the month ends; the sheet names the month on every result rather than guessing at a weekly value.
What to Do Monday
Open the Copper and Wire Price Sheet, enter the COMEX settlement from your distributor’s quote or your own terminal, pick the conductors on your schedule and read the pounds. Put three things in the bid: the settlement, the date, and the pounds per line. Then paste the clause and set the deadband; at $6.14 copper, 5% is a $0.31 move, and the calculator shows what a $0.40 move costs on your schedule before the estimator signs. Check the gear lines of the same package against Quote Check, which returns the Bid-Tab band and the Monitor’s published lead time for a switchboard or transformer spec, and run the Lead-Time-Adjusted Schedule so the conductor PO lands the week the gear is released, not the week the bid was won. If the run is 400 A or larger, price the aluminum case at the delivered price, not the sheet’s LME default, with the Tariff Exposure Calculator open for imported rod. Contribute the wire lines from your last three quotes to the Equipment Price Benchmark; it publishes nothing until a cell has five contributors and eight quotes, and wire is the class where that will happen first.
What Version 1 Adds
Three things, in the order they are likely to land. The bulletin log grows from one distributor to several: Graybar, WESCO, CED and Rexel publish commodity notes to customers, and mills publish price letters that reach distributors; version 1 logs every one obtainable as a public document, same row format, same rule that a row comes from the document and not from a call. Finished THHN and MC cable price bands arrive from the Public Bid-Tab Price Book: municipal and utility bid tabulations for building wire by conductor size, normalized to $/kft with the award date, region and n, so the sheet can show metal value and awarded price on the same row for the same size. And the COMEX settlement replaces the blank field, under a data license from CME Group, so the sheet’s default becomes the US price a bid actually clears on and the LME-based series moves to the comparison column. Until then the reference price is monthly, the gap is stated, and the pounds are the number to put in the bid.