Silver miners fell 5.45 percent, the steepest move in the tables, on a day when silver itself rose 2.34 percent to 56.85 dollars an ounce. The mining beat’s selloff story reads the split as position unwinding rather than a change in the physical market: the equities are being sold for risk, not for metal.
Uranium miners fell 4.92 percent and gold miners 4.4 percent in the same unwind, extending a week in which the uranium basket is down 10.99 percent. The mining edition’s uranium story notes why the names move like this: with no deep futures market, the miners and their ETF carry the whole policy premium for US nuclear fuel, and they give it back first when risk budgets shrink.
Japan’s Nikkei 225 fell 4.9 percent, the Asian leg of the chip rout. Semiconductors fell 4.5 percent, Nvidia 3.16 percent and Broadcom 3.1 percent, after September’s US inflation print, consumer prices up 3.9 percent on the year, reset rate expectations across the AI complex. See today’s chip selloff story and the rates edition’s report on Fed hike odds, which jumped on the same print, with December now close to fully priced for a rise.
Copper miners fell 4.24 percent, with a fundamental assist the other groups did not have: the Escondida supervisors’ settlement, updated in place this morning, removed the scarcity premium the strike threat had built into the metal, and copper itself eased from Wednesday’s three week high. See today’s copper story on the settlement.
Dry bulk freight fell 4.12 percent, its slide now 12.82 percent on the week. No clear single driver appears in this morning’s reporting; the fall extends a trend rather than answering to an event.
Bonds and the dollar moved the other way. The US 10 year yield fell 2.7 basis points to 5.19 percent and the 30 year fell 3.8 points to 5.53 percent, a flight to quality bid inside a risk off session, while the dollar index eased 0.46 percent. The Australian dollar fell 0.88 percent after September’s jobs report, employment down 39,300 with unemployment at 4.7 percent, cut the odds of another Reserve Bank hike, the story the rates edition leads on.
The synthesis is a positioning washout, not a macro verdict: equities tied to the two most crowded trades of the autumn, AI hardware and mining, fell four to five percent while the metals, the bonds and the data told calmer stories. What would change the read is follow through in the physical markets, copper below this week’s settlement levels or freight stabilising, neither of which today’s tables yet show.