Gold, Silver and Copper Tracker

The complex re-converged. Gold implies $4,601.85 on Monday's book, up 2.9% from $4,471 two sessions ago. Copper reversed its slide to $6.537, up 1.8%. Silver sits at $68.90. For the first time in a week all three moved the same way.

The curve is the story. All three metals are backwardated into month-end—gold prices $4,601.85 for Monday, $4,600.32 for Friday and $4,593.17 for August 31, and copper steps down $6.537 → $6.512 → $6.501 across the same three horizons. Then gold's year-end ladder jumps to $4,750, 3.2% above spot.

Nine days lower, four months higher. That is not a forecast so much as a shape, and it is the same shape on all three ladders.

The second thing worth seeing: silver and copper are trading their tails while gold trades its level. Silver's deepest leg by both volume and open interest is Above $73.50 at 2.5%—a 6.7% move in two days. Copper's is Above $6.92 at 2%. Gold's deepest is Above $4618 at 40%, right next to the money.

Gold on four horizons. Read them left to right as a term structure: Monday, Friday, month-end, year-end.

Monday ($12,651): implied $4,601.85. The deepest position is $1,863 on Above $4598 at 52.5%—the strike straddling the implied level, which is where a book trading its level should be deepest.

Month-end ($13,221, $45,469 of open interest): implied $4,593.17, nine dollars below Monday. Its deepest position is $4,526 on Above $4011.99 at 99.5%—$4,526 parked to collect half a percent.

Year-end ($4,351, $89,515 of open interest): implied $4,750. The deepest position is $18,662 on 4,300 or above at 71.5%, but the deepest flow is $1,451 on 5,500 or above at 16%—a 20% move in four months.

Polymarket's August book is the cross-exchange read, and it has already closed six rungs: every "reach $4,600 or below" leg settled at 1.00 this month. What is live is $4,700 at 60.4%—and on the downside, the $3,900 dip rung at 0.7% took $1,682, four times the flow on the $4,000 dip at 1.3%. The cheaper crash is the more popular one.

Silver and copper, Monday and Friday. Both books are shaped nothing like gold's.

Silver ($7,425 Monday): implied $68.90. Its deepest leg by volume and open interest is $1,231 on Above $73.50 at 2.5%. Nothing near the money comes close.

Copper ($9,464 Monday): implied $6.537, reversing two sessions of decline. Deepest leg: $2,386 on Above $6.92 at 2%—a 5.9% move in two days, and a quarter of the book's entire daily volume.

Two metals, two books, and in both of them the money is on a strike the book itself says will not print.

Month-end, where the backwardation shows. Silver's August 31 book carries $58,853 of open interest on $2,234 of daily volume—26 to 1—and its deepest position is $3,976 on Above $44.99 at 95%, which is $3,976 committed to earn 5%. Copper's month-end book is the smallest of the three at $9,138, and it implies $6.501, three and a half cents below Monday.

The spotlight: gold's Above $4598 contract, sitting at 52.5% with the deepest open interest in the daily book, next to Polymarket's August ladder for the cross-exchange read. If you want one number for where gold is right now, this contract is it—the book's own coin flip.

• Whether the backwardation resolves down or the year-end ladder resolves up. The curve currently says gold falls nine dollars in nine days and then rises $150 in four months. One of those two legs is wrong.
• Copper's reversal. One session up after two down is noise. A second would make the $6.92 tail strike—currently 2% and holding a quarter of the book's volume—look less silly.
• Silver's 26-to-1 open-interest ratio. $58,853 parked against $2,234 a day, most of it on a 95% rung. That is carry, not conviction, and it unwinds fast if silver moves.
• The $5,500 gold rung at 16%. It took the most volume in the year-end book. A 20% run in four months is a real position, not a lottery ticket, and it is being accumulated.
• Polymarket's closed rungs. Six of them settled this month. If gold takes out $4,700, the live half of that book empties too, and the cross-exchange read on gold gets thinner just as it gets interesting.