Commodities Wrap 13 August: Palladium Drops 3.9 Percent While Sugar Is the Only Gainer

By The Edge Research Team

Commodities were broadly weaker on Thursday, with sixteen of the seventeen contracts tracked here quoted below their previous settlements, our calculation. Palladium led the decline, down 3.89 percent at 1,320.50 dollars an ounce, and sugar was the only gainer, up 2.01 percent. Energy was uniformly lower, with Brent quoted 2.30 percent lower at 86.93 dollars a barrel and West Texas Intermediate 2.63 percent lower at 81.08 dollars, per CNBC.

Commodity prices below are CNBC most-active futures quotations captured late in the session, measured against the previous settlement. The agricultural contracts had completed their trading sessions and their quotations were no longer moving when captured; metals and energy were still trading, so those levels are late-session quotations rather than official exchange settlements. Currencies, Treasury yields, volatility and crypto are reported as intraday market readings rather than commodity settlement prices.

Energy was uniformly weaker. Natural gas fell 2.78 percent to 2.726 dollars per million British thermal units, the largest decline in the complex. Heating oil lost 1.39 percent to 4.2443 dollars a gallon and RBOB gasoline 0.97 percent to 3.1231 dollars, the mildest fall of the five energy contracts. Crude had the clearest specific pressure. The US Energy Information Administration reported that commercial crude inventories excluding the Strategic Petroleum Reserve rose 17.4 million barrels in the week to 7 August, to 424.4 million barrels, a level the agency puts about 2 percent below the five-year average for the time of year. The build was not purely a consumption signal. The same report shows crude imports averaged 7.3 million barrels a day, up 1.14 million a day on the previous week. Over seven days that increase is equivalent to about 8 million barrels, or roughly 46 percent of the reported build, our calculation. The inventory number landed a day after OPEC and the International Energy Agency published sharply different views of 2026: OPEC expects world oil demand to grow by about 0.6 million barrels a day this year, the agency expects it to fall by 1.6 million, leaving them about 2.2 million barrels a day apart on demand growth.

Metals fell in step. Palladium’s 3.89 percent drop was the largest move of any commodity tracked here. Platinum lost 2.60 percent to 1,723.30 dollars an ounce, silver 1.58 percent to 64.665 dollars and gold 1.28 percent to 4,410.40 dollars. Copper was the most resilient, easing 0.41 percent to 6.5885 dollars a pound. The gold to silver ratio stood at 68.2, our calculation, against 68.0 at the previous settlement.

Agriculture was mixed but mostly lower. Sugar was the day’s only gainer among the seventeen, rising 2.01 percent to 16.75 cents a pound. Coffee fell 2.05 percent to 313.40 cents and corn 1.77 percent to 472.25 cents a bushel, giving back a large part of Wednesday’s 4.45 percent jump. Cotton lost 1.23 percent to 83.34 cents a pound and cocoa 0.26 percent to 5,710.00 dollars a tonne. Wheat and soybeans were close to unchanged, at 668.50 and 1,183.00 cents a bushel respectively.

Away from commodities, the session was shaped by the morning’s inflation data. The Bureau of Labor Statistics reported that the producer price index for final demand was unchanged in July, with final demand goods down 0.7 percent and services up 0.2 percent, and the index up 4.7 percent over twelve months. Treasury yields fell across the curve, the 2-year down 5.4 basis points to 4.145 percent, the 10-year down 4.9 basis points to 4.643 percent and the 30-year down 3.3 basis points to 5.214 percent. The US dollar index eased 0.07 percent to 99.947. The euro firmed 0.05 percent to 1.1530 dollars while sterling slipped 0.07 percent to 1.3483. The Kuwaiti dinar was unchanged against the dollar at 0.3072 and the National Bank of Egypt published the dollar at 50.23 pounds to buy and 50.33 to sell. Bitcoin was steady at 63,333.03 dollars, up 0.04 percent, and the CBOE volatility index rose 1.31 percent to 14.74.

Table – Energy, 13 August, ranked by change:

Table – Metals, 13 August, ranked by change:

Table – Agriculture, 13 August, ranked by change:

Table – Currencies, intraday 13 August:

Table – US Treasury yields, intraday 13 August, ranked by change:

Table – Volatility and crypto, intraday 13 August, ranked by change:

Why it matters: A session in which sixteen of seventeen tracked commodities fall invites a single explanation, and the cross-asset evidence does not supply one. A stronger dollar was not the driver, since the dollar index was slightly lower. A broad flight from risk is a poor fit as well, with the volatility index at 14.74 and Bitcoin barely moved, though neither reading rules it out entirely. Falling Treasury yields are the third candidate and the least usable of the three, because producer prices were unchanged in July and final demand goods fell 0.7 percent, which gives the bond move an inflation and policy dimension of its own rather than making it independent evidence about commodity demand. What remains is several pressures running at once. Crude faced the clearest of them, a 17.4 million barrel inventory build in which the week’s rise in imports alone was equivalent to roughly 46 percent of the total, our calculation, arriving a day after OPEC and the International Energy Agency published demand growth forecasts 2.2 million barrels a day apart. In metals, palladium and platinum fell far further than gold, which is consistent with heavier pressure on the industrially exposed end of the complex. The breadth of the decline is the striking part; the causes look sector by sector rather than macro.

Outlook: For crude the test is whether the build reverses as the week’s unusually large import figure normalises, since a build in which imports are equivalent to nearly half the total resolves differently from one driven by weak consumption. The gap between the OPEC and the agency’s demand forecasts is unlikely to close quickly, which leaves the physical data carrying the argument in the meantime. In metals, continued underperformance by platinum and palladium against gold would reinforce the distinction between the industrially exposed metals and gold’s monetary and investment role. In agriculture, corn giving back most of Wednesday’s jump within a session is the pattern to watch, and wheat and soybeans finishing effectively flat suggests the grain move earlier in the week was narrower than it looked. On rates, further inflation data will show whether the fall in yields holds; a firmer print would challenge the disinflationary reading of Thursday’s move.

Sources: CNBC; US Energy Information Administration; US Bureau of Labor Statistics; OPEC; International Energy Agency; National Bank of Egypt.

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