Ordering the day by how far each print travelled rather than by how loudly it was reported. The grain board wins by a distance.
1. Wheat, 6.2% in one session
Chicago wheat went from 652.75 to 693.25 US cents a bushel, or 255 dollars a tonne, the largest single-session move anywhere on the board and a level that changes the arithmetic of every unpriced milling cargo out of the Black Sea. Nothing in the day's supply news argues for it: Argentina posted a record July for corn exports and Rosario lifted its 2025-26 crop estimate, which is loosening rather than tightening the feed complex. Freight and handling capacity keep arriving too, with storage and berthing being added at Greenock and new locomotives entering service on the Western Australian grain haul. A 40-cent day on thin August liquidity tends to invite an argument the following morning.
2. Gasoline, down 4.4% while the barrel went up 4.5%
RBOB fell to 2.9902 dollars a gallon, 1,068 dollars a tonne, on a day Brent rose from 87.07 to 90.99 dollars, and diesel added 0.9% to 4.2896 dollars a gallon, 1,343 dollars a tonne. Crack values on the light end therefore compressed hard in a single session while the middle distillate held its ground, which is the seasonal shape arriving early. For anyone buying product cargoes rather than crude, the gasoline leg is now the cheap side of the barrel and the diesel leg is not.
3. Sugar, a record in Punjab and less cane in the ground
Wholesale sugar in Punjab's mandis touched 60 rupees a kilo with retail at 65, a domestic record, at the same time as kharif cane area came in at 58.31 lakh hectares against 58.62 a year earlier and 39 Maharashtra mills still carried cane payment arrears five months after crush ended. Ethanol keeps taking the surplus, with a further 1.98 crore litres allocated to one Modi Naturals subsidiary. Dhaka, meanwhile, is preparing to restart shuttered state-owned mills. New York raw sugar closed at 17.07 cents, 376 dollars a tonne, up 1.5%, which is a long way from pricing an Indian export programme.
4. Copper, two venues disagreeing
COMEX slipped 1.0% to 6.53 dollars a pound, 14,396 dollars a tonne, on the same day Chile's Atacama mining authority was celebrating a 2.1% advance on the London exchange. The tariff-driven shipment rush into the United States has pulled spreads and arbitrage into shapes that make a single copper price fairly meaningless this week. Behind the screens, Codelco's suspension of work at Andes Norte on seismic-risk grounds went before the Chamber's mining commission, and BHP reported a 30% jump in full-year profit with its largest dividend in four years, crediting copper.
5. Sulphur, unchanged to the decimal
The China sulphur benchmark printed 9,502.33 yuan a tonne for a second consecutive session, 1,410 dollars a tonne, and DAP held at 795 dollars with urea easing 0.6% to 383.50. The only movement in the phosphate and potash file was structural: BCI Minerals has awarded the construction contract for a sulphate of potash pilot plant in the Pilbara, a small tonnage with a long tail. Potash itself had no publishable print today.
Also on the tape: cobalt sat still at 56,290 dollars a tonne while Washington proposed auctioning seabed exploration leases off the Northern Mariana Islands; the Baltic Dry index added 15 points to 2,878; Kamoa Copper opened a community development programme at Mutshatsha in Lualaba; Kinshasa said its Ebola response now covers six provinces with a special arrangement planned for the school year; and Zambia's electoral commission completed the count across all 226 constituencies, confirming Hakainde Hichilema with 60.49% of the vote amid rigging complaints from the opposition.