App · Commodities heatmap

Commodities heatmap

Gold, silver, the other precious metals, copper and Brent sit on one board. The colour is the 24-hour move. The price on the tile is the quote, and the quotes use different units, so compare the percent.

Sample pricesSample
XAUGold2,650—Sample
XAGSilver31.0000—Sample
XPTPlatinum980.00—Sample
XPDPalladium1,000—Sample
HG1Copper4.4000—Sample
XBRBrent76.0000—Sample

Info only, not financial advice.

What is on the board

The tiles are gold (XAU/USD), silver (XAG/USD), platinum (XPT/USD), palladium (XPD/USD), copper (HG1) and Brent (XBR/USD). Gold and silver are quoted in US dollars per troy ounce. Copper and Brent are exchange symbols, so their prices are not 'per ounce' and should not be compared with gold as if they were the same unit. The percent change is the fair comparison across the board.

WTI crude is not on this page. The free data plan answers that symbol with an error, so showing a made-up WTI price would be worse than leaving it off. Natural gas, wheat, corn, coffee and sugar are not in the feed's commodity list either. The app's Commodities board can still list WTI; when the plan rejects it, that tile stays on sample prices.

How to scan it

Start with the loudest percent, not the largest price. Gold at four thousand and copper at four can move by similar percentages and mean very different things in a book, but on a heatmap the percent is what the colour is encoding. A day when gold and silver agree, and the energy tile does not, is a different day from one where every tile is the same colour.

Equal tile sizes are deliberate. These markets do not share a market-cap ranking the way a stock heatmap does. Giving gold a giant tile because the ounce price is a big number would hide silver and copper.

Where the numbers come from

The quotes are one Twelve Data request, cached for about a minute and shared with the gold price page. That keeps the free plan's eight credits a minute for the whole site instead of spending them once per visitor. If a symbol is missing from an otherwise live response, that tile says it is not on this plan. If the whole feed is down, every tile is marked as a sample.

The board is a description of the last day. It is not a view on whether gold, copper or Brent should be held. Open the app when you want these tiles next to forex or a watchlist of your own.

Questions

Why is WTI missing?
The free plan does not include the WTI/USD symbol. The page leaves it off rather than invent a price.
Can I compare the gold price with the copper price?
Compare the percent change. The quotes are not in the same unit, so the raw prices are not a ranking.
How fresh is the board?
About one minute. The request is cached and reused by the gold page.

Other pages

Open the app

Build a board with the markets you follow. The heatmap, the chart and your list live in the app.

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Info only, not financial advice.