Which metals move together — and which goes its own way?
Correlation matrix of the daily returns of gold, silver, platinum, palladium and copper over three years: platinum and palladium move together most closely at 0.70, copper goes its own way the most at 0.33 on average.
Which metals move together — and which goes its own way?
What is measured is how closely the daily moves of the past 3 years move together. 1.00 would mean: both metals always move as one, 0.00: they have nothing to do with each other. The stronger the cell, the closer the co-movement.
Closest together are Platinum and Palladium (0.71) — both platinum group metals with largely the same demand. Most independent is Copper: only 0.33 co-movement with the other four on average. The weakest pair are Silver and Copper at 0.30.
Own calculation on daily closing prices in USD, window from 11/09/2023; 820 common trading days per pair. Only days on which both metals quote are compared. 🔴 The calculation runs on daily returns, not on price levels. Two curves that rise over the long run correlate highly almost by necessity, because both contain the same trend: on levels, gold against copper would come to 0.90 instead of 0.35 — that number would describe the shared upward trend, not the co-movement. Correlation is not causation: a high value says nothing about which metal moves which. And it is not stable — in calm phases the values fall, in a crisis markets move closer together, precisely when diversification would be needed. Copper is quoted in USD per pound in the market; for the co-movement the unit makes no difference.
Where the numbers come from
This chart is calculated from our own price recordings. It is recalculated twice a day — after the daily close and after the London reference price at 16:30.
- our own measurement Our own daily closing prices for the metals — new values every trading day
The Chart view shows the most recently calculated state. The Image version — including the one for sharing and downloading — is a still image generated nightly at 02:30. Last generated on 11/09/2026 at 02:31.
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