The base metals were all mired in the red on Monday. Copper was in the green until the late pre-dawn hours, but fell off the rest of the day, only coming slightly off its intraday lows to finish at $1.6186/lb., down 2¼ cents from Friday.

Palladium is looking like it might break out of its horizontal trading pattern and follow gold and silver prices higher. If this heappens, says Jeff Clark, then the biggest gains will come in the shares of North American Palladium (PAL) and Stillwater Mining (SWC) – North America’s two largest palladium-mining companies…