NEW YORK, Feb 23, 2026, 17:49 (ET) — After-hours
- FCX last up 1.9% at $65.55 in after-hours trading
- Copper eased on rising inventories while gold jumped on tariff uncertainty
- U.S. producer prices due Feb. 27; jobs report set for March 6
Freeport-McMoRan shares (FCX) were last up 1.9% at $65.55 in after-hours trading on Monday, after moving between $63.90 and $65.88 in the regular session. Volume was about 15.6 million shares.
The outperformance came on a day when tariff headlines knocked risk appetite around and sent investors back into metals, even as Wall Street slid. “Uncertainty remains high,” Mark Hackett, chief market strategist at Nationwide, said, as traders tried to price a new 15% U.S. import tariff after a court ruling scrapped earlier levies. (Reuters)
Copper, the main driver for Freeport’s earnings, was not giving a clean signal. Benchmark three-month copper on the London Metal Exchange fell 0.4% to $12,913 a metric ton after hitting a more than one-week high earlier in the session, with LME warehouse stocks rising to their highest since March 2025, a report carrying Reuters content said. “More visible inventories … is a bit of a dampener,” WisdomTree commodity strategist Nitesh Shah said, while Robert Montefusco at Sucden Financial pointed to uncertainty around demand as China’s main futures market reopens on Tuesday. (Business Recorder)
In U.S. copper futures, 84,535 contracts traded and open interest fell to 270,613 — the number of outstanding positions — down 4,208 from Friday. Each contract is 25,000 pounds of copper. (AP News)
Gold’s jump added another layer for miners, including Freeport, which also produces gold. Spot gold rose about 2% to $5,206 an ounce and U.S. gold futures for April settled 2.8% higher at $5,225.60, while spot silver gained 3.2% to $87.23, Reuters reported. “Gold prices could rise sharply this week once activity picks up,” said CPM Group managing partner Jeffrey Christian, pointing to a mix of geopolitical and economic worries as China’s holiday lull ends. (Reuters)
Rate expectations are still doing a lot of the work in metals. The New York Fed’s Multivariate Core Trend inflation gauge ticked up to 2.8% in December from 2.4% a month earlier, a move that underlines how hard it has been to pull inflation back to the Fed’s 2% target. Dallas Fed President Lorie Logan said she was “cautiously optimistic” inflation was on a path back down and that she expected some tariff effects to “start to fade.” (Reuters)
Federal Reserve Governor Christopher Waller added more near-term uncertainty for traders trying to map rates, the dollar and commodity demand. He called January job growth “a surprise to the upside,” and said a repeat in February could tilt him toward a pause at the March meeting; February jobs data are due March 6, ahead of the March 17-18 policy meeting. (Reuters)
Company-specific news was light on Monday, but investors are still digesting Freeport’s most recent operational update. On Feb. 18, the miner said it entered a memorandum of understanding with the Indonesian government for a life-of-resource extension of operating rights at PT Freeport Indonesia’s Grasberg district, subject to an amended license, and it laid out terms that include higher exploration spending and a future reduction in its ownership stake after 2041. Chairman Richard Adkerson and CEO Kathleen Quirk said the company valued its “long-standing partnership” and called Grasberg “one of the world’s most significant copper and gold deposits.” (Q4 Finance)
Moves in peers underscored the mixed tape for miners: Southern Copper was up about 3% and Newmont gained roughly 1.8% late Monday.
But the setup is fragile. Copper has been choppy, and the visible inventory build and the first look at China’s post-holiday demand could quickly flip the mood. Tariff policy has also turned into a day-to-day variable, and miners tend to take the hit when macro shockwaves push the dollar higher.
For the next session and the week ahead, traders are watching U.S. producer prices (PPI) for January on Feb. 27 and the March 6 U.S. employment report for February — two data points that can swing rate bets and, by extension, copper and FCX. (Bureau of Labor Statistics)
