I think you need to follow gold, silver, platinum and palladium or just not bother. There is usually a trade brewing in one of them. I have a short term silver long on right now. The palladium ETF is pretty terrible though. For me, they are more tradeable than almost anything else. It is like the Russel 2000 vs Nasdaq. The Russel 2000 is super tradeable for me while the Nasdaq you may as well just buy and hold. It is incredible how muted the move has been on gold/silver with the Hamas attacks but it is tough with DXY crushing it.
Sounds like you are trading futures? Futures vs stocks probably a different ballgame, I'm only involved with stocks. Silver stocks; problem here is there are not many pureplay silver stocks as frequently silver will be a byproduct of zinc, lead, copper or gold and then from only a handful of countries, eg Mexico, Canada, Australia. But if one can find a good pureplay silver stock, they can be nicely tradeable, probably better than most gold stocks (not including pennys). Gold / silver could be thought of maybe a little like crypto, goes dormant then when catching many asleep, does a sudden hard runup out of the blue. Just musing for a moment, I can't find atm any commodity which is worthy of tradeable long for a swing trader.
Sorry man, I worry about the availability heuristic so didn't read your response until I closed my SLV trade. I was out near the open so I think I could have sat longer but whatever. Metals wise I trade SLV/GLD/PALL. I don't trade platinum. PALL might be a loss leader but who knows. GLD/SLV are amazing.
Precious metals have done well since the Hamas attack but I bet it will be short lived just like the bounce when the Ukraine conflict started. Rates rising & the USD rising will mute its rise. Gold already made its inflation move in 2020 & 2021. I think rates would have to go down for Gold to keep rising. If the Israel-Hamas conflict becomes a broader World War then Gold will skyrocket, of course. Gold/silver stocks are like Oil stocks where if the commodity is higher but the equity markets are down heavy then the stocks will go down. All the small pure play Gold & Silver stocks, at least in the US markets, have all been bought by the majors. I remember I used to own a great pure play Silver miner called Silver Wheaton (SLW) but it was bought out a while ago. I think their parent company is now called Wheaton Group but they produce Gold, Silver, Zinc, etc.
Yeah Silver Wheaton was a stock which had a nice stock chart, did very well, I used to track it as a silver bellwether, now its called Wheaton Precious Metals Corp a Canadian multinational precious metals streaming company. It produces silver mined by other companies (including Barrick Gold and Goldcorp) as a by-product of their main operations. Also does Platinum, PGM. From its website it states: "Wheaton Precious Metals is one of the largest precious metals streaming companies in the world. The Company has entered into agreements to purchase all or a portion of the precious metals or cobalt production from high-quality mines for an upfront payment and an additional payment upon delivery of the metal. Wheaton currently has streaming agreements for 21 operating mines and 13 development stage projects. The Company’s production profile is driven by a portfolio of low-cost, long-life assets, including a gold stream on Vale’s Salobo mine, and a silver stream on Newmont's Peñasquito mine." It appears not to actually mine the products itself but onsell from other companies.