While gold was busy having its best month since November 2009, an arguably more useful metal, copper, was having its worst since May 2010. This is not exactly encouraging.
Since roughly the days of Heraclitus, copper has been known by annoying market commentators as “Dr. Copper,” or the metal with a degree in economics. That’s because, unlike gold, copper is typically used to make stuff that serves an actual human purpose and thus tends to do well when people are making, selling and buying stuff.
Gold, on the other hand, does well when people are burning stuff, or maybe just hoarding stuff in a panic.
So it’s a troubling sign that copper fell 6.4% in August, its worst percentage loss since May 2010, the month of the Flash Crash and the first big eurozone meltdown. Its dollar loss was the biggest since, gulp, October 2008.