Commodities desk · Evening edition · Thursday, September 17, 2026
Breadth fell back to 38% and metals' rare joint rally cracked within a day, gold dipping while silver and copper pushed higher and hogs sank again.
Prices in this edition were taken live, not from stored closes. They were read at the Evening edition slot on Thursday, September 17, 2026. Anything named as a cause may come from a headline the desk was given.
The real-asset complex still refuses to move as one trade: yesterday's rare lockstep across all five metals lasted barely a session, gold slipping 0.12% today even as silver added 2.30% and copper another 2.81%. Crude and refined products kept splitting the other way, gasoline and diesel both still deep in the red while crude's own decline eased. One day of harmony was never enough to call a new regime, so the standing read holds: this is still a basket of separate stories, not a single inflation or growth signal, and real-asset exposure should stay diversified rather than concentrated in one metal or one barrel.
Away from metals and crude, softs and livestock had the rougher day: cocoa fell another 6.00%, lean hogs dropped 11.53% for a third straight double-digit session, and coffee's month-long rout continued with no headline yet pointing to why. Grains stayed calmer, with USDA holding corn's good-to-excellent rating at 57%, a point below the five-year norm but a point better than last week. None of this lines up into one story, just a string of separate softs and grain moves that happened to land on the same day.
With no fresh headline naming who these moves land on today, the read stays abstract: the CNN Fear and Greed Index sits at 29, in fear, down from 59 just a month ago, even as the itself eased toward 15.44. That mix of falling volatility but sour sentiment, alongside copper's growth signal set against sinking gasoline and diesel, makes today hard to file as a clean inflation trade or a clean growth trade. For anyone holding real assets rather than equities, that unresolved mix is itself the takeaway.
- Brent's loss eased to 1.63% and gasoline's to 7.93%, clawing back some of the day's earlier, steeper slide amid Iran conflict headlines.
- WTI is barely changed since being flagged at $102.22 on Sept 15, now $101.25, despite days of Gulf-supply anxiety.
- Gasoline sits almost exactly where it was flagged Sept 15 at $3.18, now $3.21, daily swings netting out to little.
- Gold's much-discussed slide has reversed since being flagged Sept 15, up 1.15% to $4382.20, even as today's session eased 0.12%.
- Copper added another 2.81% today after yesterday's 3.11% jump, back-to-back gains that keep it the clearest growth signal in metals.
- Platinum rose 1.45% and palladium 0.56%, both trailing silver's 2.30% gain but still following the complex higher.
- Cocoa fell another 6.00% today, a sharp deepening from yesterday's 2.09% dip, now down 4.83% for the month.
- Lean hogs dropped 11.53% for a third straight double-digit session, now down 13.78% for the month with no headline explaining the rout.
- Soybeans eased 0.08% even as USDA held good-to-excellent ratings at 58%, exactly matching the five-year average.
- Silver's 2.30% gain against gold's 0.12% dip pushed the gold-silver ratio down to about 66.6 ounces of silver per ounce of gold.
- Brent's premium over WTI held near $2.86 a barrel as both crudes eased together on the same Gulf-supply headlines.
- Copper's back-to-back gains keep it the standout growth signal against broad commodities (), down 0.33% today.
- Breadth slipped to 38% of tracked indices above their 50-day average from 50% this morning, as the fell to 15.44.
- The Fear and Greed Index sits at 29, in fear, down from 59 a month ago, arguing against complacency in real assets.
- Metals' broken lockstep and energy's split from refined products argue for diversified real-asset exposure rather than a single inflation or growth bet.
Lean hogs' collapse now spans three straight sessions, sliding from $78.68 to $69.60 since September 16.
Gasoline's slide eased to -7.93% today, still net flat near $3.21 versus its Sept 15 level of $3.18.
Diesel futures fell to $4.84, pulling back from Sept 16's $5.25 peak even as pump prices hit a reported record $6.31.
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 2026-09-17 session. Anything named as a driver comes from a stored series and never from a headline.
- Gasoline (RBOB)3.507USD/gal+0.64%
- Brent Crude Oil and WTI Crude OilDivergenceBrent against WTI: -0.95% against -0.51% today, and the spread between them sits 2.3 standard deviations from its own average over the last 60 stored sessions.
- WTI Crude Oil and Gasoline (RBOB)DivergenceCrude against gasoline: -0.51% against +0.64% today, and the spread between them sits 1.5 standard deviations from its own average over the last 60 stored sessions.
- ENERGY SPLITSNothing unusual upstream
- Dieselfrom Brent Crude Oil
- Corn530.50cents/bu-0.70%
- Wheat727.00cents/bu-0.51%
- Soybean Oil68.68cents/lb-0.74%
- Corn and WheatDivergenceCorn against wheat: -0.70% against -0.51% today, and the spread between them sits 1.7 standard deviations from its own average over the last 60 stored sessions.
- Argentine Pampas rainfall0th percentileArgentine Pampas rainfall sits in the 0th percentile of the same calendar window in earlier years, much drier than typical for the time of year, for the window ending 2026-09-17.
- Animal feedfrom Corn
- Corn syrupfrom Corn
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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.