ABSTRACT
The objective of the paper was to evaluate the mutual relationship of copper and zinc prices between 2011 and 2021 and to predict their future prices until the year 2030. For this purpose, the following methods were used: regression of neural structures in TIBCO's Statistica software, version 13.0, time-series smoothing by means of multilayer perceptron network, graphical representation, Pearson correlation coefficient, and logical judgment. According to the prediction, the copper price will decrease slightly compared to the preceding years. In 2026, it is expected to stabilize at USD 610/t until the year 2030. Zinc price is expected to increase slightly until the end of the year 2030 when the resulting predicted price is USD 410/t. Pearson correlation coefficient of copper and zinc achieves the approximate value of 0.65. The results thus confirm the fact that these commodities are not perfect complements. First, the mutual relationship of the two commodities indicates that the price of zinc is pushed up mainly by the copper price. On the contrary, the copper price is pushed down by the price of zinc. There is a price convergence between the two commodities. The future development of copper and zinc prices is not subject to unpredictable events, such as a political situation or the aforementioned COVID-19 pandemic. Such a long-term prediction might thus not provide an objective result.