The precious-metals complex corrects hard while copper's floor gets closer
Three weeks on from the last commodities entry, the divergence flagged on June 16 has both widened and inverted in scale: it is no longer PGMs alone that are weak, it is the whole non-copper mineral complex, and the moves are much bigger.
What I'm watching
- Silver: $61.25/oz, 30d -19.29%, 60d -19.75%. Working back from those
percentages, silver was trading near $76/oz a month ago; this is a sharp give-back, not noise.
- Platinum: $1,621.3/oz, 30d -16.06%, 60d -20.88%. Continues straight down
from the $1,760 level noted on June 16, no stabilisation yet.
- Copper: $6.2085/lb, 30d -2.11% but 60d +5.76% - has pulled back from the
June peak ($6.467 on June 16) without breaking the range.
- China MOFCOM Announcement No. 68 (2025): added silver to the STE export
quota list for the 2026-2027 cycle, effective January 1, 2026 - the clearest policy driver behind the earlier silver squeeze that is now unwinding.
What changed / what matters
The June 16 entry described copper as the outlier holding up while PGMs, rare earths and uranium fell 5-18% over 30 days. That divergence is still the dominant story, but two things changed: the correction has spread wider (lithium -9.34%, rare earth proxy -10.83%, uranium proxy -10.19%, metals and mining broad proxy -8.00%, all 30d) and it has gotten much deeper in silver and platinum specifically.
Silver's move is the standout. A ~19% pullback in 30 days off what was apparently a run into the mid-$70s is consistent with a supply-scare premium unwinding rather than a demand shock. China's MOFCOM Announcement 68 put silver under state-trading-enterprise export quota management alongside tungsten and antimony starting January 1, framed explicitly as strategic supply defence for defence, electronics and photovoltaics. That kind of quota news tends to front-load a price spike on scarcity fear, and this looks like the unwind of that fear rather than a reversal of the underlying policy, which is still in force. Platinum's continued slide (-16.06% 30d, now the sixth straight period of weakness since the June 2 entry) has no comparable policy citation in the panel; auto-catalyst demand softness in Europe remains the more plausible explanation, and it is not new.
Copper is the one metal not participating in the correction on a 60-day view, even though the 30-day print is now negative. That is worth flagging against the June 16 revise condition (copper below $6.00/lb): the metal has moved about 4% closer to that floor since then without breaching it. The copper-equity gap that supported EWA and ECH is narrower now than three weeks ago, simply because copper itself gave back part of its run.
Candidate picks within this theme
- EWC (Canada) - $58.06, 52w-pos 92.0%, DD -1.9%; still the cleanest
diversified-commodity hold, lowest drawdown in the panel by a wide margin.
- ECH (Chile) - $39.66, 52w-pos 60.6%, 1m +0.92%; positive on the month
despite the copper pullback and the standing royalty-tax headwind, a sign the equity hasn't chased the commodity move either way.
- EWZ (Brazil) - $34.92, 52w-pos 59.8%, 1m +1.77%; best 1-month print in
the panel, but the mineral linkage is weaker than for EWC/ECH; treat as speculative, not a commodity-thesis position.
- EWA (Australia) - $28.33, 52w-pos 73.3%, 1m -1.41%; tracking copper's
pullback more closely than ECH has.
- EZA (South Africa) - $64.63, 52w-pos 50.6%, DD -19.06%; the PGM
weakness (platinum -16.06%, palladium -7.51% 30d) is a direct hit to this ETF's underlying exposure and it shows: worst drawdown and worst 52-week position of the five. Lowest conviction, unchanged from June 16.
What I'd revise if I saw
Copper closing below $6.00/lb, which would both breach the June 16 floor and confirm the correction has stopped being confined to precious metals and PGMs.
Cross-references
- Previous entry on this theme:
docs/thinking/2026-06-16-commodities-order-839-pgm-split.md - China MOFCOM Announcement 68 (silver STE quota):
docs/iptm/actions/2025-10-26-china-mofcom-announcement-68-tungsten-antimony-silver-ste-quota.md - Weekly synthesis:
docs/thinking/2026-07-04-saturday-synthesis.md - Regime/DXY context:
/api/regime