Mining equities sold off across the board in the latest session in the site tables, fetched at 07:00 ET. The silver miners index fell 5.45 percent, uranium miners 4.92 percent, gold miners 4.4 percent and copper miners 4.24 percent, with rare earth miners down 2.91 percent and lithium and battery names down 1.88 percent. The majors followed: BHP fell 1.99 percent and Rio Tinto 1.94 percent.
The oddity is the split with the metals themselves. Silver in the same tables rose 2.34 percent to 56.85 dollars an ounce and natural gas gained, while Brent crude fell 2.19 percent and dry bulk freight dropped 4.12 percent. Miners falling on a day their metal rises is the signature of position unwinding rather than a change in the physical story, and the week’s physical news, an averted strike at Escondida and 7 percent output growth at Antofagasta, argues for supply relief, not scarcity.
London prices told the same calmer story on Thursday morning: a market note from SP Angel put copper near 14,595 dollars a ton after Wednesday’s strike driven high of 14,695 dollars, with gold and silver easing fractionally from records rather than breaking down. The selloff, in other words, is in the equities and the freight, not yet in the metals.