Commodities calls
A daily read on 16 commodities: metals, energy and farm goods. Each gets one score from -100 to +100 built mainly from trend, plus how the market has reacted to the US dollar, equities and real interest rates. Above +25 the call is bullish, below -25 bearish, in between neutral. Open any row for the reasons, the risk levels and how the model would have done before. How the calls are made.
Today at a glance
Updated each night after the markets close. The last price of the day can be a partial day. A call is research, not advice: see the limits below.
Browse the commodities
Calls that changed in the past 10 days
Energy, copper and farm rows show the delayed price of the front-month futures contract (quotes run about 10 to 15 minutes behind and stand still when the exchange is closed) in the market's usual unit: dollars per barrel, per MMBtu, per gallon or per pound, and US cents per bushel for grain and per pound for sugar. The grey line is the exchange-traded fund (USO, BNO, UNG, UGA, CPER, WEAT, CORN, SOYB, CANE) that holds futures and drives our chart and call: its share price is not a commodity price, and the 1 month change in the table is the fund's. Baskets show only the fund. Gold, silver, platinum and palladium are spot prices.
Metals
Energy
| Market | Price | Call | Score |
|---|---|---|---|
| WTI crude oil | $100.86USO 162.51 | Bullish | +39 |
| Brent crude oil | $114.52BNO 68.91 | Bullish | +47 |
| Natural gas | $2.718UNG 9.89 | Bearish | −27 |
| Gasoline | $3.110UGA 142.39 | Bullish | +42 |
Agriculture
| Market | Price | Call | Score |
|---|---|---|---|
| Wheat | 626.50¢WEAT 22.84 | Neutral | −14 |
| Corn | 459.75¢CORN 17.78 | Neutral | −16 |
| Soybeans | 1,256.75¢SOYB 26.64 | Bullish | +19 |
| Sugar | 20.13¢CANE 12.06 | Strong bullish | +52 |
| Agriculture basket | –DBA fund 27.92 | Neutral | +9 |
Broad
| Market | Price | Call | Score |
|---|---|---|---|
| Broad commodity basket | –DBC fund 33.57 | Bullish | +46 |
Does it work? The honest answer
We replayed the model from 2010 to today across 12 commodities, using only the data available on each day, one position per instrument, rebalanced monthly, with trading costs . Pooled and equal-weighted:
| Strategy | Return a year | Risk (volatility) | Return per unit of risk |
|---|---|---|---|
| Follow the model's calls | +3.3% | 10.6% | 0.31 |
| Always long, no calls | +0.2% | 15.1% | 0.02 |
*A t-value of about 2 or more is the usual bar for calling a result statistically reliable; below that, luck cannot be ruled out. The model's edge here is small and not statistically proven. The split into an early half (2010 to 2017) and a later half (2018 onwards) is on the method page, together with what each ingredient contributed. Hypothetical results, before taxes, using fund prices for energy and farm goods; not a promise and not advice.
Risk warning. These are educational research views built from prices, interest rates and positioning data, not personal advice and not an invitation to trade. Forex and commodity trading, especially with leverage, carries a high risk of losing money quickly, and the large majority of retail accounts that trade leveraged products lose money. Past behaviour of a model does not predict the future.