CCI Scores (Jan 5): Spotlight on uranium
The new year begins with silver and copper leading platinum, aluminum, and gold at the top of our commodity fundamentals league table. This relative strength has been visible in our work for months and was further validated by the extraordinary spot price advances in December 2025. All but aluminum among these five metals advanced to fresh all-time nominal price highs last month.
Less obvious is the relative strength in uranium, making it our spotlight commodity this week.
On our scoring, uranium physical fundamentals are now 8th strongest among the 36 leading commodity markets we report in our table. Uranium's CCI score is presently 18.1, up from 11.5 a month ago. Short-run directional momentum is toward a further tightening fundamental balance.
Demand strength is the factor driving the scoring for physical uranium. Uranium's relative position is also notable in context: U.S. power (CC1, 15.9) ranks 12th this week, while U.S. gas (CCI, 13.3) ranks 19th. The core upshot is Uranium's strength is likely a valid positive leading indicator for U.S. power and gas here, as it strongly reinforces other evidence of the rapid tightening in claims on load.
NYM UxC yellowcake futures are confirmatory: prompt price for UXA1 (presently, the Jan-26 contract or UXAF6) last closed at $81.85 per lb. (Jan 2), up about +7.7% from $76 per lb. when we published our >$80 per lb. 2025 yearend cash price forecast four months ago (Uranium: Critical Shortfall, Surging Momentum. Stay OW. 2-Sep-2025).
In other energy markets, the capture and extradition of Venezuelan strongman Nicolás Maduro by U.S. military forces presents the largest shift in oil price risk that is not yet picked up in the CCI table. CCI oil scores are still calculated, by design, on trend oil production and export activity through today, with no injection of forward assumptions by us on alterations to either factor.
Heavy crude (CCI=6.7, 36th place) has already been in or near last place among the core CCI commodities for several months. On a forward-looking, risk-adjusted basis, this weekend's events in Venezuela incrementally favor owning refinery margins generally and heavy-grade-geared cracks in particular, on the strong likelihood that Maduro's removal opens up the potential for meaningful recovery in development of Venezuela's abundant and relatively low cost oil reserves over the next three to five years. As we pointed out two days ago, our new baseline expects 500 thousand b/d of Venezuelan crude oil production growth by yearend 2028 and 1.0 million b/d by yearend 2029 (Connecting Dots from Caracas to Taipei: Oil, Power, and the Pacific, 3-Jan-2026).
This means equity investors will be evaluating whether to accumulate shares of Valero (VLO) while commodity traders will be assessing odds for a widening in the LLS-Mars spread.
To be clear, the incremental Venezuelan supply is not fully additive to prior expectations for global supply growth. This tranche of lower-cost resources is a direct threat to the higher-cost streams it will displace.
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