Think of the calendar as a year of Aluminium trading laid out on a grid: every weekday from Monday to Friday gets its own square, tinted by that day's result.
Squares tinted green ended the day in profit, those tinted red ended it lower. Stronger shading marks a bigger move.
Hovering over a square brings up the closing figure together with the change it represents. Earlier years are available from the drop-down.
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What does the performance calendar show?
The performance calendar visualizes the daily price change of a precious metal over an entire calendar year. Each individual cell in the heatmap represents exactly one trading day (Monday through Friday). Weekends and holidays when no trading takes place are omitted.
The color of each cell encodes both the direction and the magnitude of the daily change compared to the previous day:
- ◆ Green indicates a price increase — the darker the green, the larger the daily gain. Dark green cells mark days with gains exceeding 2%.
- ◆ Red indicates a price decline — the darker the red, the larger the loss. Dark red cells show daily losses of more than 2%.
- ◆ Gray (neutral) represents minimal movements between −0.1% and +0.1%. On these days, the price practically did not change.
Tip: Hover over any cell to see the exact closing price and percentage change for that trading day. This allows you to instantly identify whether a price movement was moderate or extreme.
Reading the heatmap correctly
A heatmap is more than a colorful overview — it reveals patterns that remain invisible in pure numerical data. The key is not to look at individual cells in isolation, but to recognize connections and clusters.
Identifying trends and phases
Connected blocks of the same color reveal the prevailing market phase. An uninterrupted series of green cells over several weeks indicates an uptrend — the price rose day after day, or at least on most trading days. Conversely, a red block signals a correction phase. Particularly revealing are the transitions: where does green abruptly switch to red? This often marks a local high.
Identifying sideways markets
When green, red, and gray cells alternate without a clear direction emerging, the market is in a sideways phase (consolidation). During such periods, the price moves within a narrow range. For long-term investors, these phases are neutral; for traders, they offer little momentum.
Shock days and extreme movements
Individual, intensely colored cells amid an otherwise calm phase point to external shock events. Examples from recent history: the Lehman collapse in September 2008, the COVID panic in March 2020, or geopolitical escalations. Such days can be immediately identified in the heatmap and cross-referenced with historical events.
Comparing years
Use the year selector to analyze different calendars side by side. For example, compare 2020 (the COVID year) with 2019 (a calm environment): the density and intensity of green and red cells differs fundamentally. Such comparisons sharpen your understanding of how strongly crises and market phases influence daily price development.
Typical patterns in the industrial metals market
Industrial metals are not bought as a store of value, they are consumed. Their price therefore follows production: construction volume, vehicle manufacturing, grid expansion. The performance calendar makes visible that this settles into recurring phases — and that single days stand out from an otherwise quiet year whenever something fails on the supply side.
Chinese New Year — the demand gap
China consumes more than half of the world's copper, aluminium and zinc. Ahead of the New Year holiday (late January or February), processors build up inventories; afterwards plants often stand still for two weeks. In the calendar this appears as a cluster of green cells in January followed immediately by a pale, mixed phase — not because the market is weak, but because hardly anyone is buying.
Building season — spring to early summer
As construction starts up in the northern hemisphere, demand rises for copper (wiring, piping) and zinc (galvanising steel). March to June is historically the phase with the most green days in a row. A wet or cold spring visibly pushes that back — a dependency precious metals do not have.
Exchange inventories — the real pacemaker
The exchanges publish daily how much metal sits in their warehouses. Falling stocks mean more is being consumed than delivered, and that often drives the price for weeks. This pattern is stronger than any season: a run of green days with no apparent trigger usually stands for warehouses being drawn down.
Supply disruptions — the isolated strong days
A strike at a Chilean copper mine, an export ban on nickel ore, a smelter without power: news like this moves the price by several percent in a single day. In the calendar these are the dark cells amid pale neighbours. Because supply of industrial metals is concentrated in a few countries, they occur more often than with gold.
Important: These phases are tendencies across many years, not rules for any single one. A recession overrides any building season, and a stimulus programme can fill a demand gap completely. The calendar shows what was — not what is coming.
Understanding volatility
Volatility describes how strongly a price fluctuates within a given period. In the performance calendar it is immediately visible: a year with many intensely coloured cells alternating was more restless than one in which pale and grey cells dominate.
Why industrial metals fluctuate more strongly
Their demand hangs on the business cycle, and supply can barely be expanded at short notice: a new mine takes years. When rising consumption meets rigid supply, the price reacts sharply. Daily movements above two percent are therefore more frequent than with gold, and years with double-digit price swings are the rule, not the exception.
Quoted per tonne
Industrial metals trade per tonne, not per ounce. One percent of movement in copper is around a hundred dollars per tonne — for a processor buying hundreds of tonnes a year that is a six-figure amount. This explains why these markets are so heavily shaped by hedging and why inventory data is watched so closely.
What a single extreme cell can mean
A day with a double-digit change is rare for an industrial metal, but possible — and it need not reflect the market at all. In March 2022 nickel rose by more than one hundred percent within hours because a large short position had to be unwound; the exchange suspended trading and cancelled transactions. Such days are recognisable in the calendar as a single extreme cell. Anyone who finds one should look up the reason instead of reading it as a market movement.