Copper just hit an all-time high 🟠

Welcome back to the Day Trading newsletter 📈

A hot jobs report put a September Fed hike back on the table, oil ripped 7% as the U.S. and Iran started trading blows again, and the week ended with the White House openly leaning on the central bank.

Markets are closed today for Labor Day, but the metals market didn't get the memo.

Let’s get into it 👇️ 

📆 Tuesday 9/8 — Markets reopen (9:30am ET) as Canada's counter-tariffs take effect: Canada has pledged to match U.S. trade actions dollar for dollar. Watch the loonie and cross-border names like autos and lumber after Trump's weekend post.

📆 Wednesday 9/9 — Apple "Surprise and Shine" event (1pm ET): John Ternus's first product keynote as CEO, with the iPhone 18 Pro and a foldable iPhone expected. Apple's stock rarely rallies on event day; the question is whether a folding phone justifies the hype.

📆 Thursday 9/10 — Producer Price Index, August (8:30am ET): Wholesale inflation, the last pipeline read before CPI. Oil's surge means energy could push the headline number higher.

📆 Thursday 9/10 — Oracle and Adobe earnings (after the close): Oracle's cloud backlog is the AI-demand barometer of the week; consensus is $1.74 per share on $19.13 billion in revenue. Adobe needs to show its AI tools are converting to revenue.

📆 Friday 9/11 — Consumer Price Index, August (8:30am ET): The data point that decides the Sept. 15-16 Fed meeting. July CPI was 3.4% year over year; a hot print all but locks in a hike, a cool one gives Warsh room to hold.

🛢️ Oil rose to a six-week high Monday after the U.S. and Iran attacked each other's tankers over the weekend. Brent climbed to $97.73 a barrel and WTI topped $92, both the highest since late July, after the U.S. struck three Iranian oil tankers Saturday and Iran hit tankers in the Strait of Hormuz. Saudi Aramco facilities were reportedly hit Monday. Oil gained more than 7% last week.

🇺🇸 President Trump said Friday he'll stop trading with countries that run a surplus against the U.S. unless the Fed cuts rates. The Truth Social ultimatum capped a week in which the president, vice president, Treasury Secretary Bessent, and a senior economic adviser all publicly urged Fed Chair Kevin Warsh not to hike. Markets still price roughly 60% odds of a hike at the Sept. 15-16 meeting.

🔻 Stocks fell Friday after the hot jobs report, but the S&P 500 still eked out a gain for the week. The Dow dropped 271.86 points, or 0.51%, to 53,414.25, the S&P 500 slid 0.38% to 7,718.60, and the Nasdaq lost 0.29%. For the week, the S&P 500 rose 0.1%, the Nasdaq added 0.4%, and the Dow fell 0.3%.

🇨🇳 China is injecting roughly $54 billion into its biggest state banks and insurers as growth slows. Agricultural Bank of China and ICBC lead the recipients, funded mostly by special treasury bonds, with China's state tobacco monopoly chipping in. It's the first time Beijing has recapitalized insurers, a sign of spreading financial stress. The injection was smaller than expected, and shares of the banks and insurers fell Monday in Hong Kong.

💰️ Bitcoin hit $82,272 Friday, its highest since May, and logged a third straight winning week. The token spent most of the year stuck between $60,000 and $70,000 before breaking out in late August as the "debasement trade" returned: the Treasury said it would buy more long-dated bonds, long yields fell, the dollar weakened, and gold and Bitcoin caught a bid. Bitcoin hovered just under $80,000 on Sunday.

🇩🇪 Germany's far-right AfD won a historic victory in Sunday's Saxony-Anhalt state election, taking around 44% of the vote. Chancellor Friedrich Merz's conservatives finished a distant second at around 18%, and his party ruled out any coalition with the AfD. The result puts a far-right party on the cusp of state-level power for the first time since World War II and raises the political risk premium on Europe's largest economy.

🤖 Land purchases for future AI data centers hit about $6 billion in the first half of 2026, up 79% from a year ago. Data centers now account for 27% of U.S. development sites, second only to apartments, according to Avison Young. Rural land prices are surging, and so is the backlash, with residents organizing to block projects. Investors are bracing for a political fight.

Copper hit its highest price ever on the London Metal Exchange on Monday.

Benchmark three-month futures rose as much as 0.8% to $14,533 a ton, topping the previous record set in January, and was still up 0.7% at $14,513 late in London trading.

The milestone came on a day when U.S. exchanges were closed for Labor Day and trading was thin, which tells you how much pent-up pressure is in this market.

The rally has been building for weeks on bets that President Trump will extend tariffs to imports of refined copper.

The Commerce Department has been running a Section 232 investigation into copper imports, and the framework on the table would phase in a 15% tariff on refined copper starting in January 2027, rising to 30% in 2028.

Commerce was due to report to the White House on whether those levies are warranted roughly two months ago. It still hasn't, and the uncertainty has traders hedging for the worst.

Tariff expectations have created a huge price gap between copper on New York's Comex and copper on the LME.

Traders have exploited it by shipping hundreds of thousands of tons of metal into the U.S. this year to sell at the higher American price.

As a result, global inventories are technically fine, but they're stranded in U.S. warehouses.

LME stockpiles, which back the exchange's contracts, fell to critically low levels last month, triggering a squeeze on short sellers.

Spot copper now trades at a steep premium to three-month futures, a condition called backwardation, which is the market's way of saying it needs metal now, not later.

Copper is up about 17% over the past year because the world's aging fleet of big mines can't keep up with demand from data centers, power grids, and renewables. Chile's copper shipments fell to their lowest in more than a year in August despite record prices. Rio Tinto, BHP, Glencore, and Zijin Mining all posted big profit gains last quarter on the back of their copper units.

What to watch:

• First, the Commerce report on refined copper tariffs, which could land any day and would either lock in the arbitrage or unwind it violently.

• Second, LME inventories: if fresh deliveries keep trickling in, the squeeze eases; if not, prices keep climbing.

• Third, demand destruction. At $14,500 a ton, buyers start looking for substitutes, and the rally is already running against rising global borrowing costs and the Iran war.

Miners are the obvious winners, but anyone building data centers or grid infrastructure just saw their input costs hit a record.

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⚠️ Disclaimer: Not financial advice. Do your research before making any trades.