Monday Mining Minutes: Summer seasonal dip greater than average this year

Research evidence excerpt

Monday Mining Minutes: Summer seasonal dip greater than average this year

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13 Jul 2026 00:00:07 ET │ 14 pages

Monday Mining Minutes

Summer seasonal dip greater than average this year

CITI'S TAKE Ephrem Ravi AC

+44-20-7986-2462

MUSINGS – Mining equities tend to perform poorly during the summer

months based on almost three decades of seasonality analysis, with ephrem.ravi@citi.com

September in particular being the weakest month on average for Shashi Shekhar, CFA

performance. The seasonality effect tends to be strong and at times +91-22-4277-5028

overcomes the effects of commodity/company fundamentals. The period shashi.shekhar@citi.com

from May through October tends to be softer for China’s steel demand.

Likewise, mining equities struggle to perform during the summer and tend Krishan M Agarwal

to bottom out in late-September/early-October and rally strongly in the +44-020-7986-4092

subsequent months. krishan.agarwal@citi.com

The traditional “Sell in May” trend was disrupted several times over the past couple

of months as the sector was already down c.10% before May (and following the

Middle East conflict) and given heightened volatility due to the US–Iran crisis. Post

the US–Iran deal in mid-June, as the situation started to normalize, the seasonality

trend appears to be playing out strongly. Since then, metals (base, precious, and

bulks) are down between 3% and 14%. Major heavyweights mirrored the same

trends, and the MSCI World mining index is currently down 12% as a result.

We expect the impact of seasonality to remain pronounced in the coming weeks as

Chinese domestic demand remains weak, with fixed asset investment and

consumption losing momentum, while exports and new-economy sectors

continue to support industrial production.