Commodities desk · Evening edition · Thursday, October 29, 2026
Strong US growth and a Fed leaning toward higher rates are weighing on silver and platinum, while war-premium crude keeps fuel costly for the places that run on it
Lean hogs fell 5.52% on October 28, 9.9 times its typical daily move. Over the window, Sugar +34.03% led.
Drawn from the numbers stored with this edition; the same picture is on its share card.
The morning edition's card drew the same chart from its own numbers, written Oct 29, 2026, 9:34 AM EDT. Show it.
Lean hogs fell 5.52% on October 28, 9.9 times its typical daily move. Over the window, Sugar +34.03% led.
The picture on the morning edition's share card, drawn from the numbers stored with that edition, written Oct 29, 2026, 9:34 AM EDT. The evening edition above replaced it as this day's latest edition.
Energy still sets the tone, and nothing in the session has changed that. Crude finished almost flat after the morning's retreat, with WTI holding above 100 and Brent near 111. Fuel prices are well up on the month. That leaves the conflict premium in place even though today's headlines were mostly about tech earnings. Metals and farm goods are softer, so crude is the one complex still holding its ground. Nothing supplied explains why the oil dip faded by the close.
Platinum had the weakest day among the metals, and silver followed it lower while gold barely moved. Silver is now more than 13% lower on the month. Copper slipped but is still higher on the week. Natural gas fell again even though US storage rose to 3,724 bcf, about on its seasonal norm. In livestock, lean hogs bounced after the morning slide but remain far below where they started the month.
The mix of third-quarter growth at 3.4% and a Fed chair leaning toward higher rates matters for anyone holding real assets. It keeps the cost of waiting high, which weighs on metals that pay nothing. Shell's record refining margins show where the fuel profit sits. Oil is the one hedge with a live geopolitical story, since the EIA shows refinery runs at 92.8% and gasoline demand cooling. Today's tape says commodities are not moving as one inflation hedge.
- Crude closed flat after a morning dip, with WTI near 103 and Brent near 112, still up over 11% on the month
- Natural gas fell 3.86% to 2.92 even as US storage rose to 3,724 bcf, 0.4% above its seasonal normal
- Diesel fell 1.50% while US distillate stocks drew 1.4% to 102,824 thousand barrels, and refinery utilisation slipped to 92.8%
- Platinum fell 3.65% and palladium 1.67%, extending a month of losses of more than 12% for both
- Silver dropped 2.43% against gold's 0.26%, so the gold-silver gap keeps widening as yields stay near 5%
- Copper eased 1.20% to 6.59 but is still up 3.13% on the week
- Corn is rated 56% good to excellent against a 60% five-year average, and the price slipped 0.11%
- Coffee is down 8.29% on the week while sugar rose 0.93% today
- Brent at 111.55 sits about 8.8 above WTI at 102.79, so the global benchmark carries the larger war premium
- Diesel at 4.59 remains far above gasoline at 3.10, since gasoline demand is down 3.8% over four weeks
- Silver is down 13.2% on the month against gold's 3.5%, so the gold-silver ratio keeps widening
- Metals fell while crude held, so real assets are acting as separate bets and not one inflation hedge
- Energy carries the geopolitical premium while metals trade on rates and the dollar, so size each exposure on its own
- Strong GDP and a Fed leaning toward higher rates argue for caution and for sizing real-asset exposure with downside in mind
Natural gas bounced off its 2.60 low earlier this week but is still well below early October's level above 3.
Platinum's fund price has slid for weeks and made a new low today, unlike gold, which barely moved.
Silver has lost its early-October gains, and today's drop took it to the lowest close in this window.
The numbers behind it
Top to bottom: Upstream driver, Commodity, Where it goes
- Upstream driver
- Physical flow
- Divergence
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 2026-10-29 session. Anything named as a driver comes from a stored series and never from a headline.
- Broad Commodities (DBC)33.72USD-0.21%
- WTI Crude Oil102.00USD/bbl-0.76%
- Diesel and Heating Oil (ULSD)4.736USD/gal-1.64%
- Gasoline (RBOB)3.185USD/gal+0.37%
- WTI Crude Oil and Diesel and Heating Oil (ULSD)DivergenceCrude against diesel: -0.76% against -1.64% today, and the spread between them sits 3.1 standard deviations from its own average over the last 60 stored sessions.
- WTI Crude Oil and Gasoline (RBOB)DivergenceCrude against gasoline: -0.76% against +0.37% today, and the spread between them sits 1.9 standard deviations from its own average over the last 60 stored sessions.
- US gasoline product supplied-6.9%US gasoline product supplied is 8,358 MBBL/D for the week ending 2026-10-23, -6.9% against 8,982 in the prior published week.2026-10-23
- Trucking fuel costfrom Diesel and Heating Oil (ULSD)The trucking and rail paths from diesel are the price of the FUEL and not the price of moving the load. A freight rate is a different number, and where one is drawn on this page it is labelled as a rate.
- Rail fuel costfrom Diesel and Heating Oil (ULSD)The trucking and rail paths from diesel are the price of the FUEL and not the price of moving the load. A freight rate is a different number, and where one is drawn on this page it is labelled as a rate.
- Gold4,031.40USD/oz-0.50%
- Silver52.191USD/oz-2.37%
- Copper6.581USD/lb-0.91%
Across the complex
- Hogs have fallen 16.77% over a month while cattle are up 4.56%, so the herds are pulling apart. The cattle and hog spread is 2.9 standard deviations from average.
- Crude is up 19.66% over a month while gasoline is down 1.39%. That gap is a refining margin story, and it sits beside a 6.9% weekly fall in gasoline product supplied.
- Corn is down 13.62% over a month, which lowers a feed input for both cattle and hogs. Hogs still fell the most, so feed cost does not account for their move.
Go deeper
The Commodities desk's own dashboard: what is moving, why, and where it goes next. Open it
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.