Commodities desk · Evening edition · Friday, September 25, 2026
Gasoline and natural gas fall further, but mortgage rates hit 7.45%, a lopsided break for households.
Prices in this edition were taken live, not from stored closes. They were read at the Evening edition slot on Friday, September 25, 2026. Anything named as a cause may come from a headline the desk was given.
Energy still calls the tune, and today's churn cut the same way it has all week: gasoline tumbled 4.07% and natural gas gave back another 3.77%, while diesel defied both, up 1.47% and extending the split between refined products that has now run several sessions. Metals firmed together, gold and silver both higher, offering a rare instance of unison rather than divergence. Grains and softs pulled in different directions, cotton surging while wheat and corn barely stirred. The lesson holds: it is the split within energy, not a single direction across the complex, that is doing the work.
Elsewhere the story turned less one-sided: corn, soybeans, soybean oil and cocoa all flipped from yesterday's losses into modest gains, even though USDA's condition readings for corn and soybeans, 57% and 58% good-to-excellent, sat exactly where they stood a week ago. Saudi Arabia's ports offered the day's more dramatic supply tale, crude exports climbing to their highest level since the Iran-Yemen conflict intensified even as pipelines feeding them keep coming under attack from Iran-backed militants in Yemen and Iraq. Options traders, meanwhile, are reportedly positioning against the conventional read on where oil heads next, a sign the pullback in crude is not universally trusted.
With no headline today naming the people behind a shortage or a strike, the read stays macro: a Treasury selloff has pushed the 30-year mortgage rate to 7.45%, its highest since April 2024, even as gasoline, natural gas and crude all cooled today. That combination, cheaper at the pump but pricier to borrow, is the mixed signal anyone holding real assets against inflation and growth risk is weighing. Breadth improved to 38% of tracked indices above their 50-day average, and the Fear & Greed Index still sits at 37, in fear territory, a setting where gold and silver's shared gain today reads as a hedge, not a bet on relief.
- Gasoline fell 4.07%, its steepest drop this week, as refinery utilization slipped 2.8 points to 94.0%.
- Brent fell 2.48% and WTI 1.89%, even as Saudi Arabia's crude exports hit their highest level since the Iran conflict began.
- Natural gas fell 3.77%, unwinding its surge, with storage at 3,351 Bcf now essentially matching its seasonal normal.
- Gold rose 0.67% and silver 1.18%, both firmer together, tilting the gold-silver relationship toward silver again.
- Copper slipped 0.24% to $6.77, still reading as a soft signal on global growth rather than a turnaround.
- Platinum gained 1.19% while palladium held roughly flat, a small divergence within the platinum group.
- Corn, soybeans and cocoa all flipped from losses to modest gains today, corn up 0.24% and cocoa up 0.23%.
- Cotton extended its rebound, up 3.75%, continuing its recovery amid hopes for a US-China trade dialogue.
- Wheat's slide eased to just -0.42%, a steadier day for a winter crop still rated only 26% good-to-excellent against a 44% normal.
- Brent's premium over WTI narrowed further to $4.92 a barrel, down from $5.58 last check, as Brent's slide outpaced WTI's.
- Diesel rose 1.47% even as WTI fell 1.89%, deepening the split between refined products and crude first opened this week.
- Gold's 0.67% gain trailed silver's 1.18%, tilting the gold-silver relationship further toward silver after its rise a day earlier.
- The 10-year Treasury yield closed at 5.18%, up 1.37% since first flagged this week, keeping mortgage costs elevated at 7.45%.
- The fell 5.04% to 14.88 today but remains up 4.20% since first flagged, an uneasy calm beneath market breadth gains.
- Real-asset exposure across energy, metals and grain still looks the sounder hedge, with fear still outweighing greed at 37.
Gasoline fell to 3.20 on Sept 25, its lowest close this month, as refinery runs and demand both eased.
Natural gas eased to 3.24 after spiking to 3.30 on Sept 24, still up over the past month despite today's pullback.
Cotton has rallied off its September 18 low of 77.38 on hopes for a US-China trade dialogue.
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 2026-09-25 session. Anything named as a driver comes from a stored series and never from a headline.
- Broad Commodities (DBC)32.62USD-1.69%
- Lean Hogs78.225cents/lb+12.59%
- Live Cattle218.875cents/lb-1.01%
- LIVESTOCK SENDS MIXED SIGNALSNo upstream reading this session
- Meat processingfrom Lean Hogs
- Sugar17.50cents/lb-5.96%
- Coffee278.60cents/lb+1.18%
- Cotton78.91cents/lb-0.75%
- US upland cotton rated good or excellent-8.0ppUS upland cotton rated good or excellent is 34% for the week ending 2026-09-20, -8.0pp against USDA's own published five-year average of 42% for the same week.2026-09-20
- Natural Gas3.196USD/MMBtu-5.16%
- WTI Crude Oil92.41USD/bbl-4.85%
- Brent Crude Oil104.32USD/bbl+4.09%
Across the complex
- Gasoline's rally alongside falling refinery utilisation for a second straight session reinforces a persistent physical constraint between crude supply and refined fuel output.
- The corn-wheat spread has held near two standard deviations from its average across sessions even as Pampas dryness persists, suggesting a sustained rather than one-day feed substitution signal.
- Cattle and hog prices moved so far apart in one session that the standard relationship check was disabled, an unusually sharp livestock divergence worth noting on its own.
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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.