Copper Hits A Record | Gold Goes The Other Way | The Duty Nobody Has Signed | The Shortage Landed Offshore

US markets reopen after the long weekend. The tape has already split.

Nasdaq futures are higher. Everything else is lower, and the Dow is down hardest.

Korea ran hot on Monday, led by its two memory makers on AI demand.

The weight on the other side is rates. Friday's payroll print came in at triple the forecast.

The two year Treasury yield is near its highest since January of last year. The ten year Treasury yield is back at the top of its range.

Traders have moved back toward pricing a hike next week. The Fed cannot answer. Blackout runs to the meeting.

US aircraft struck three Iranian tankers over the weekend. West Texas Intermediate is up hard this morning at a three month high.

The dollar has steadied. Gold is lower again. Copper went the other way and is extending Monday's record.

Freeport-McMoRan (FCX) mines it in Arizona.

Market Implication

Volatility is bid with the tape flat. Somebody is paying up for cover in a week with no Fed voice and two inflation prints. Quiet sessions do not price like this.

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What the duty left out.

Last year the United States put a heavy duty on semi finished copper. Wire, tube, sheet, cable. Refined cathode was left out.

Left out, but never settled. The proclamation gave the Commerce Secretary until the thirtieth of June to report back on the copper market. The President could then decide whether to tax refined metal too.

June passed. No report came.

So the desks answered it themselves. If cathode gets taxed later, buy it now and land it inside the border.

July set a record for American refined copper imports, on data back to 1990. Nearly half came from Chile.

None of that metal got consumed. It changed address.

In April Goldman Sachs called a copper surplus for this year, and has not withdrawn it. In June it widened its forecast shortage outside the United States more than tenfold.

Both at once. Same year, same metal, different postcode.

Structural Setup

Anyone budgeting a grid or a data center now picks between two copper prices. Only buyers on American soil get the cheap one.

London ran out first.

Copper in New York has carried a premium over London for most of this year. That gap is the whole trade. It paid to buy metal anywhere and land it here.

The gap never closed by New York falling. London emptied instead.

Then Chile shipped less copper in August than in any month for over a year. It did that with the price climbing.

So the miners are collecting on a shortage they did not create. The big producers have already banked it in their results.

Freeport-McMoRan takes the New York price on the copper it digs here. Its buyers get no such offset. A cable plant and an electrical contractor pay the metal and bill a fixed price.

A record industrial metal price usually reads as a growth signal. The cyclical end of the tape is not trading it as one.

Sector Read

Watch the gap between New York and London rather than the metal itself. A narrowing gap with London at a record means the arbitrage is finished and the shortage stays offshore. A gap that holds means tons are still crossing.

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The yen moved without help.

In July it took a joint US and Japanese operation to lift the yen off its lows. On Monday it hit a six month high, and nobody had to sell a dollar.

The Bank of Japan is the reason. It meets on the seventeenth and eighteenth, two days after the Fed. The market treats a hike there as close to settled.

That matters to a US bond desk because of who owns government debt. Japan is the biggest foreign holder, and it is trimming.

A large share of that book is unhedged. An insurer holding a US bond through Monday lost money on the currency alone.

Japan's own index fell on Tuesday as the currency climbed.

Meanwhile the alternative at home has repriced. Japan's ten year government bond yield touched a thirty year high last week before easing back.

Watch Signal

Treasury sells three year notes today, ten year notes tomorrow and thirty year bonds on Thursday. Watch the indirect bid on Thursday. That is the tenor a Japanese life insurer buys, and the first long bond sale since the yen turned.

The eighth that gets the credit.

ABM Industries (ABM) reports before the open. Most of what it does is clean buildings.

The part the market pays up for is smaller. Its technical arm builds microgrids, battery storage and electrical rooms for data centers. It grew better than a quarter last time out.

It is also about an eighth of the company, and its second thinnest margin.

The chief financial officer said why on the last call. The big battery jobs are heavy on equipment, and the margin is thinner for it.

The chief executive put it another way. Design and engineering pays. Turning the wrenches does not.

The biggest business here, cleaning offices, grew by almost nothing last quarter.

The Read

The buildout reaches this income statement as revenue in the smallest segment and drag on the blended margin. Watch the equipment share in the technical arm this morning. The heavier it runs, the more of the buildout gets installed at somebody else's margin.

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Economic Data: NFIB Small Business Optimism (Aug) 6:00am. ADP weekly employment change 8:15am. Manheim Used Vehicle Value Index (Aug) 9:00am. NY Fed one year consumer inflation expectations 11:00am. Three year note auction 1:00pm. Consumer credit (Jul) 3:00pm.

Fed Speakers: None. Blackout runs through the September 15-16 meeting.

Earnings: United Natural Foods (UNFI), ABM Industries (ABM), Canaan (CAN) before open | Casey's General Stores (CASY), GameStop (GME), ServiceTitan (TTAN), Braze (BRZE), Mission Produce (AVO) after close

Overnight: Nikkei 225 −1.7%. Shanghai Composite +0.2%. FTSE 100 +0.2%, DAX -0.16%

Somebody is paying to hold the copper that landed in American sheds.

Freight, finance, insurance and storage, all year.

That bill only earns out while the New York premium survives.

The phase-in the proclamation contemplates still starts on the first of January. Nothing has moved that date, even though the report feeding it is ten weeks overdue.

So this quarter puts one question to the biggest positioning trade in the metal. Forecast, or bet?

The decision is late. The date is not.