ChAI Insight

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ChAI Insight gives unprecedented access to institutional views and analysis of markets on a game changing AI platform. Thousands of possibilities summarised into intelligence you can act on. Click on the links below to see examples of what we have to offer.

Click on each section to see what commodities we offer and through to each individual page.

Metals

Aluminium

Lithium Carbonate (Asia)

Lithium Carbonate (Europe)

Lithium Carbonate (US)

Lithium Hydroxide

Lithium Hydroxide (Europe)

Lithium Hydroxide (US)

Steel HRC (Saudi Arabia)

Steel Wire Rod Common China (SH)

Tin

Zinc

Energies

Natural Gas - Henry Hub

Natural Gas - LNG (JKM)

Natural Gas - TTF

Power - German Baseload (EEX)

Power - UK Baseload (EEX)

RBOB

WTI

Agriculturals

Wheat (Paris Milling)

Plastics

LLDPE

PVC

Forest Products

Frequently Asked Questions

Still have a question?

Which suppliers or regions are the most reliable/unreliable right now from a supply chain perspective?

Mexico is the standout supplier in North America, offering days-not-weeks lead times, strong IP protections and mature manufacturing ecosystems that minimize logistical risks (sourcify.com). Conversely, Europe is currently the least reliable region, with the GEP Volatility Index plunging to –0.92 in December, signaling severe fragility and underutilized capacity across its manufacturing base (gep.com). Meanwhile, Asia’s supply chains are also underperforming—Asia’s index fell to –0.42, the lowest in the post-pandemic era, indicating ongoing weakness in key hubs like China, Japan and South Korea (gep.com).

What are the key supply chain risks for the next quarter (climate events, wars, shipping route changes)?

NOAA forecasts a weak La Niña winter (Dec 2025–Feb 2026) likely to bring heavier snow and ice storms across the Midwest and Northeast, regional flooding in the Pacific Northwest, and lingering drought in the South—risks that could paralyze key rail and trucking networks and slow port operations in Q1 2026 (wsinc.com). The ongoing Russia–Ukraine war has driven Black Sea war-risk insurance premiums from about 0.4–0.6% to as high as 1% of vessel value amid renewed attacks on shipping, sharply raising costs for grain, oil, and ammonia exports and heightening the threat of retaliatory maritime disruptions (reuters.com). Historic drought at the Panama Canal has cut daily transits from 38 to 24 slots (with draft limits down to 12.8 m) and is expected to tighten further to 18 by early 2026, forcing roughly 40% of Asia–US East Coast cargo to reroute via the Suez Canal or Cape of Good Hope—adding 7–12 days and up to 25% in surcharges (freightamigo.com).

Are there any substitution materials currently becoming more competitive?

Yes. Sodium-ion batteries are emerging as a competitive substitute for lithium-ion, with IRENA projecting cell costs could fall to around $40/kWh as production scales—leveraging abundant, low-cost sodium carbonate and cheaper cathode materials (pv-magazine-usa.com). Aluminum is also rapidly displacing copper in wiring and HVAC components—now capturing about 40% of the global HVAC market—driven by a copper-to-aluminum price ratio of roughly 3.7:1 that delivers roughly 50% system-cost savings at similar performance (discoveryalert.com.au).

Are there any current supply chain disruptions (strikes, port closures, weather events, shipping delays)?

1) A transport operators’ strike at Italy’s ports of Naples and Salerno has fully halted container handling since December 1, creating a significant backlog and vessel delays expected to persist into early January 2026 (hillebrandgori.com). 2) Severe weather in early December disrupted operations at Sri Lanka’s Port of Colombo, causing operational chaos and average vessel wait times of about 1.2 days (everstream.ai). 3) Recent winter storms across the US Midwest—particularly in Kansas City and West Michigan—have slowed interstate freight by up to 50%, with delivery transit times averaging 33% longer and widespread last-mile delays (accio.com).

What tariffs does the EU have with the US?

Under its Common Customs Tariff (as a WTO member with no US-EU free-trade agreement), the EU applies MFN duties averaging 3.5–4.2% on American imports, with peak rates of 20–25% on key agri-food products (e.g. beef, dairy, poultry) and a 10% levy on passenger vehicles (twitter.com). Pursuant to the August 21, 2025 EU-US framework agreement, the EU will eliminate all tariffs on US industrial goods and grant zero-duty access to a list of US seafood and agricultural products—including tree nuts, dairy, fresh and processed fruits and vegetables, processed foods, planting seeds, soybean oil, and pork and bison meat (policy.trade.ec.europa.eu).

What are new government polices?

1. On April 15, 2025, President Biden signed an Executive Order under Section 232 launching a formal investigation into imports of processed critical minerals and their derivative products to strengthen domestic supply chains and national security (whitehouse.gov). 2. On April 8, 2025, Senators Bill Cassidy and Lindsey Graham introduced the Foreign Pollution Fee Act (S. 1325), proposing an eco-tariff on imports based on the pollution intensity of their production to drive cleaner manufacturing practices abroad (en.wikipedia.org). 3. On November 7, 2025, the Department of the Interior released its final 2025 U.S. Critical Minerals List, adding ten new minerals—including copper, silver, and uranium—to prioritize domestic mining and reduce reliance on foreign sources (en.wikipedia.org).

What raw materials are in short supply?

Antimony trisulfide supplies remain constrained after China halted exports in 2021, prompting the U.S. military to develop small‐scale domestic refineries that each produce just 7–10 metric tons annually to meet ammunition primer needs (reuters.com). London Metal Exchange copper inventories have plunged to historic lows—with 35% withdrawn on December 2—and spot prices topping $11,500/tonne as analysts forecast a 304,000-tonne refined copper deficit in 2025 (reuters.com). Congo’s cobalt export ban since February, only partially replaced by an October quota system, has driven spot prices from $10 to $26 per pound and deepened shortages of battery-grade cobalt (reuters.com).

What are current freight rates?

As of December 8, 2025, the Baltic Dry Index stood at 2,694 points, down 1.21% from the previous session (investing.com). For the week ending December 9, 2025, the Drewry World Container Index rose 7% to $1,927 per 40 ft container, with spot rates from Shanghai to Los Angeles at $2,256 and Shanghai to Rotterdam at $2,241 (cyprusshippingnews.com).

Do your models/algorithms change for time horizons? (short term/long term)?

Yes. We use different models for different time horizons and for different commodities. However, the models have a fairly similar high-level construction across the different horizons they work over.

What is unique about what you do? Aren’t large hedge funds already doing something similar?

Large systematic asset managers will be making predictions of commodities prices using alternative (and standard) data in the same way as us. However, they will be turning these predictions into trading signals that are optimised for their own use case (i.e. taking into account trading costs, interactions with other assets in their portfolio, risk constraints etc) and are less interested in raw predictive accuracy, untangling how the predictions are derived so that various assumptions can be played around with nor selling these predictions on.

What kind of AI techniques are you using?

We are using a variety of machine learning models at different points in our prediction processes, for example Gaussian Processes, Support Vector Machines, LASSO and Multi-Task Learning.
Aside from prediction accuracy, we also believe it is very important for our predictions to be explainable, hence our choice of techniques

Our Risk / Compliance Department is concerned about model transparency - How do you ensure your models can be explained?

We are motivated by explainability and also the ability to control our sensitivity to various inputs so that users can up/down weight the importance of economic data, currency movements, demand/supply information etc.

Can you expand on how the AI is used and how it's a differentiator?

At a very high level it's used to integrate a variety of data sets that are pretty different to each other in nature (text, images, freight movement, economic time series) and sampled at different frequencies (daily, weekly, monthly etc), and in some cases not even consistently themselves (for example satellite imagery because of cloud cover). Furthermore, the data often has a very low signal to noise ratio and has a prognostic ability that changes with time, so that relationships between our inputs and what we are trying to predict changes.