Commodities desk · Evening edition · Friday, September 18, 2026
Oil's slide deepened again today, easing some pressure on fuel costs even as cocoa and hog prices kept caving.
Prices in this edition were taken live, not from stored closes. They were read at the Evening edition slot on Friday, September 18, 2026. Anything named as a cause may come from a headline the desk was given.
Energy again did the heavy lifting today, with the Saudi supply story that eased crude earlier this week stretching further into the close: WTI fell 6.32% and Brent 5.81%, deeper drops than either logged before, even as Houthi strikes keep hitting the Gulf. Gasoline and diesel slid with them. Metals kept telling an entirely separate tale, silver and copper pushing higher again while gold added only a slim 0.48%. Nothing here has merged into one signal, so the standing call holds: real-asset exposure still belongs spread across barrels and metals rather than parked in either.
Away from crude, cocoa's slide deepened to 7.66% on the day and lean hogs fell another 13.05%, still with no headline pointing to a cause for either. Wheat and copper moved in opposite directions, wheat easing while copper pushed higher again, a reminder that the growth read behind base metals hasn't cracked the way some of the softs clearly have. Corn and soybean conditions, by contrast, sat still this week, a quiet patch of the growing season against all the noise in the price charts elsewhere across the complex.
Today's moves read more as an inflation-and-growth story than one about any particular workforce, since nothing in the headlines names who these prices actually touch. Crude's renewed slide takes some heat off pump costs even as diesel's own futures eased by less than WTI did today, a reminder that relief doesn't spread evenly through the fuel chain. Copper's steady grind higher still argues for real growth beneath the surface, while gold's slim gain against silver's outsized one suggests inflation hedging remains selective rather than broad, a nuance that matters most to anyone holding real assets rather than equities right now.
- WTI and Brent extended today's slide to 6.32% and 5.81%, as Saudi supply through Hormuz keeps outrunning Houthi strikes
- Gasoline sank 7.54% while diesel eased a smaller 5.56%, even as refinery utilization held near capacity at 96.8%
- Natural gas held flat on the day with storage running 0.9% above its seasonal normal, a quiet corner of the complex
- Silver jumped 2.25% today while gold added just 0.48% to $4420.90, widening the split between the two havens
- Copper rose 2.05% to near $6.72, extending its climb and reinforcing the growth read in base metals
- Platinum and palladium both firmed near 1.6-1.9%, tracking silver's strength rather than gold's far more muted move
- Cocoa's rout deepened to -7.66% on the day, a slide that has now cut over a tenth of its value this week
- Lean hogs sank another 13.05% today, deepening the month's slide toward -15.83%, still with no headline explaining the rout
- Wheat fell 1.86% even as corn and soybean conditions held roughly steady against their five-year norms
- Brent's premium over WTI widened to about $3.26 a barrel as WTI fell harder than Brent today
- Gasoline's 7.54% drop outpaced WTI's 6.32% slide, while diesel's decline lagged crude for a change
- The gold-silver ratio slipped to about 66 ounces of silver per ounce of gold as silver keeps outrunning gold
- The resumed its slide, down 4.08% today to 14.81, even as sentiment stayed in fear at 29
- Real-asset exposure still argues for staying spread across barrels, metals and grains rather than one commodity bet
- Copper's steady climb keeps arguing for growth even as gold's gain stays modest, a split worth watching for inflation hedging
Lean hogs cratered 13% today to $68.60, deepening a slide with still no headline explaining it.
Cocoa tumbled 7.7% to 5330, deepening a slide that has erased over a tenth of its value this week.
Gasoline fell 7.5% to $3.24, sliding harder than crude as Saudi supply eases pump-cost pressure.
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 2026-09-18 session. Anything named as a driver comes from a stored series and never from a headline.
- Broad Commodities (DBC)32.93USD-0.36%
- Cocoa5,327USD/t-7.71%
- Coffee294.55cents/lb+1.38%
- Cotton77.38cents/lb-1.31%
- US upland cotton rated good or excellent-7.0ppUS upland cotton rated good or excellent is 36% for the week ending 2026-09-13, -7.0pp against USDA's own published five-year average of 43% for the same week.2026-09-13
- Corn527.50cents/bu-0.57%
- Wheat714.25cents/bu-1.75%
- Soybeans1,303.50cents/bu-1.23%
- Corn and SoybeansDivergenceCorn against soybeans: -0.57% against -1.23% today, and the spread between them sits 1.5 standard deviations from its own average over the last 60 stored sessions.
- Corn and WheatDivergenceCorn against wheat: -0.57% against -1.75% today, and the spread between them sits 2.0 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 2026-09-18.
- Animal feedfrom 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.