Commodities desk · Evening edition · Friday, September 4, 2026
The real-asset complex still isn't moving as one trade: energy, metals and grains keep telling separate stories even as bond yields climb and inflation fears resurface. Gasoline snapped back to +2.37% just a day after plunging 6.36%, while WTI and Brent both flipped positive alongside it. Coffee's collapse deepened to -9.70% and cotton jumped 4.05%, showing soft commodities still moving on their own logic.
Prices in this edition were taken live, not from stored closes. They were read at the Evening edition slot on Friday, September 4, 2026. Anything named as a cause may come from a headline the desk was given.
- Gasoline reversed to +2.37% even as the EIA's 4-week gasoline demand proxy fell 1.2% and refinery utilization held at 98.0%.
- Coffee's rout deepened to -9.70%, now down 3.56% since first flagged at 303.70 on the 2026-09-02 open.
- Cotton jumped 4.05% to 86.74 with no fresh USDA driver, a bounce rather than a fundamentals-led move.
- Coffee's chart shows a clean downtrend from 377.75 on 8/24 to 292.90 now, not a basing pattern.
- Corn is essentially flat since 2026-09-02 (537.75 to 536.75, -0.19%), a grind despite today's +4.17% headline pop.
- WTI, Brent and gasoline all turned positive together, a synchronized energy bounce that grains and softs aren't confirming.
- Fear & Greed sits at 42, still in fear territory and down from 52 a week ago despite today's more modest slip.
- The ticked up 1.75% today, consistent with broader equity risk-off rather than a commodity-specific signal.
- Gold (-0.28%) and silver (-0.30%) are drifting together but far less sharply than yesterday's reversal, looking like stabilization, not a fresh inflation-hedge rotation.
- The energy complex's synchronized bounce doesn't yet look like a durable inflation trade given softening gasoline demand data.
- Coffee's continuing breakdown argues for treating soft commodities as a separate exposure from metals and energy.
- Rising 10-year yields near 4.78% and persistent debt/tariff inflation talk still support modest real-asset diversification.
Coffee's slide to 292.90 marks a fresh multi-week low, down nearly 22% from its late-August peak.
Corn's climb to 536.75 looks steep on the daily move but is flat versus where it stood two weeks ago.
Cotton's bounce to 86.74 remains well below its 91.70 late-August high, a choppy range not a breakout.
The numbers behind it
Every move here is measured between two stored daily closes, so the reading belongs to a session rather than to a time of day. This block is cut at the 2026-09-04 session. Anything named as a driver comes from a stored series and never from a headline.
- Broad Commodities (DBC)31.90USD-0.19%
- Natural Gas2.975USD/MMBtu+2.13%
- WTI Crude Oil and Gasoline (RBOB)DivergenceCrude against gasoline: +0.20% against +2.54% today, and the spread between them sits 1.8 standard deviations from its own average over the last 60 stored sessions.
- US gasoline product supplied-4.2%US gasoline product supplied is 8,551 MBBL/D for the week ending 2026-09-04, -4.2% against 8,922 in the prior published week.
- Dieselfrom WTI Crude Oil
- Fertilizerfrom Natural Gas
- Wheat716.00cents/bu-2.72%
- Soybean Oil68.78cents/lb-1.04%
- Soybeans1,293.75cents/bu-0.96%
- US Corn Belt rainfall93th percentileUS Corn Belt rainfall sits in the 93th percentile of the same calendar window in earlier years, much wetter than typical for the time of year, for the window ending 2026-09-04.
- Animal feedfrom Soybeans
- Palladium (PALL)25.31USD-1.86%
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The desk voices are written by AI, not by human reporters. Every figure is taken from the listed market, sensor and headline data, and an automated check flags any figure or quoted source that is not.