Commodities desk · Evening edition · Monday, September 28, 2026
Bullion's slide deepens and oil's Hormuz rally fades, while PepsiCo's new price hikes show food costs still squeezing shoppers.
Prices in this edition were taken live, not from stored closes. They were read at the Evening edition slot on Monday, September 28, 2026. Anything named as a cause may come from a headline the desk was given.
Metals continue to set the tone, and the slide that opened the session deepened by the close, gold down 3.85% and silver down 5.61%, both losses wider than they were a few hours earlier. Energy's answer to Hormuz tension didn't hold either, WTI's gain shrinking to 0.55% as gasoline slipped back into a loss. Grains and softs split further, coffee's rally widening while wheat and soybeans extended their declines. The complex most worth watching stays metals, not because oil failed to hold its bounce, but because gold, silver, platinum and palladium are again all moving the same direction, down, for a second straight session.
Away from bullion, energy's rally lost momentum through the session even as the Strait of Hormuz standoff itself hasn't eased, Iran's seven-day reopening offer still sitting rejected; gasoline slipped back into a loss while refinery runs stayed below last week's pace. In the grain belt, winter wheat's condition rating of just 26% good-to-excellent, well under its five-year norm, sits oddly alongside a fresh price decline rather than a rally. And in Minnesota, the Mesabi Range drew a rare vote of confidence with a $15 billion steel plant announced alongside Mesabi Metallics, the largest such facility in U.S. history, even as the broader materials sector stayed in the red.
PepsiCo's announcement that it will raise prices across sodas, chips and dip lands squarely on today's grain and soft moves, since corn, sugar and soybean oil sit behind those products' costs; TD Cowen flagged the move as a real affordability risk for shoppers even as corn slipped 1.14% and sugar edged up 0.38% today. For households watching grocery bills, a snack-aisle price increase arriving alongside softening crop prices is a reminder that shelf prices don't always track commodity costs in real time, and that inflation pressure can persist even when the inputs behind it look calmer than the headlines suggest.
- WTI's Hormuz-driven bounce faded to just 0.55%, and gasoline reversed into a 0.83% loss despite refinery runs still near 94%.
- Diesel rose 1.48%, a smaller gain than crude's yesterday, with distillate stocks down 0.4% for the week.
- Natural gas fell 2.70% even as storage builds kept pace with the seasonal norm, now just 0.2% below it.
- Gold fell 3.85% and silver fell 5.61%, both slides deepening through the session rather than steadying.
- Platinum fell 3.23% and palladium 4.22%, both slipping less than silver's 5.61% drop but still lower across the board.
- Copper slid 2.31% to $6.61, still the weakest growth read across metals today.
- Wheat fell further to a 2.24% loss, even with winter wheat rated just 26% good-to-excellent against a 44% five-year norm.
- Coffee's rally widened to 3.52%, its sharpest gain of the week despite a rough month for the crop.
- Cocoa flipped from yesterday's gain into a 0.21% loss, joining wheat and soybeans on the soft side of today's ags board.
- Brent's premium over WTI held near $5.29 a barrel, both grades cooling together after the Hormuz spike faded.
- Diesel's edge over crude widened again, gaining 1.48% versus crude's 0.55%, while gasoline alone turned negative.
- Copper's 2.31% drop keeps flagging a softer growth read, standing apart from the safe-haven story running through gold and silver.
- Today's split, oil firm while metals retreat broadly, argues for spreading real-asset exposure across the complex rather than one commodity.
- The Fear & Greed Index sits at 34, unchanged from a week ago but down from 54 a month back.
- Materials fell 0.66% and Financials fell 1.17%, both lower even as oil firmed, underscoring why a scattered real-asset book cuts risk.
Silver's slide deepens again, dropping faster than gold as its safe-haven case keeps eroding.
Cotton holds its rebound near recent highs, a steadier softs story against today's metals-led selloff.
Palladium extends its slide, down 4.22% today and now underperforming gold's own retreat this week.
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 2026-09-28 session. Anything named as a driver comes from a stored series and never from a headline.
- Broad Commodities (DBC)32.49USD-0.40%
- Lean Hogs78.250cents/lb+13.36%
- Live Cattle217.450cents/lb-2.12%
- LIVESTOCK SENDS MIXED SIGNALSNo upstream reading this session
- Meat processingfrom Lean Hogs
- WTI Crude Oil92.60USD/bbl+0.21%
- Gasoline (RBOB)3.338USD/gal+4.71%
- Brent Crude Oil105.28USD/bbl+8.05%
- WTI Crude Oil and Gasoline (RBOB)DivergenceCrude against gasoline: +0.21% against +4.71% today, and the spread between them sits 2.3 standard deviations from its own average over the last 60 stored sessions.
- US refinery utilisation-1.5ppUS refinery utilisation is 92.5% as of 2026-09-25, -1.5pp against 94.0% in the prior published week.2026-09-25
- Dieselfrom WTI Crude Oil
- Palladium (PALL)22.01USD-4.22%
Across the complex
- Cattle and hogs diverged so sharply in one session that the pair's own relationship check was suspended, echoing a similar flag on crude versus its products.
- Brent rose while WTI fell and refinery utilisation dropped, a combination pointing to a widening gap between crude grades and refined fuel markets.
- Sugar's near six percent drop is the sharpest single move across the softs complex, standing apart from cotton's weak condition reading and coffee's modest gain.
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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.