NEWS
Thu 27 Jan 2022
IMPORTANT DISCLAIMER: any and all views expressed here are simply good faith views and should not be taken as recommendations or inducements to buy or to sell or to othwise trade in any way whatsoever.
PALLADIUM: the world's major source of palladium is the Russian Federation and since that nation defacto invaded Ukraine the metal's price has fallen significantly; my personal view is that the price fall is due to a seemingly global acceptance that we will all be driving electric vehicles within fifty years from now. The major Russian producer of palladium,Norilsk, announced in 2019 that they had received their government's approval to purchase up to 600,000 ounces of palladium from the Russian Central Bank and hold a substantial stock of the metal. It should always be remembered that amount of the element affords its controllers tremendous market clout. Whist palladium has been dentistry's most used noble metal it is chiefly utilised for auto catalysts in petrol engine vehicles and thus did benefit from the switch away from diesel. DOWNSIDE PRICE CONSIDERATIONS - beyondbany increase in electrical vehicle usage looking to dent demand of more immediate concern might be the introduction of thinner catalysts.
GOLD: Russian invasion of southern has trumped fears concerning Chinese military incursions into Taiwanese airspace and brought on archetypal war fears aka ponderings on food security. The plethora of monthly annoucements from US entities - Non-farm payrolls report, Unemployment claims report, Domestic mortgage applications report, US Mortgage applications etc, etc - continue to cause price volatility via the massive US paper/electronic ( ie. futures, options, derivatives) trade. This market dwarfs London's physical gold trade and is such a huge market factor it can be supposed to serve political & national economic aims apart from commercial interests. Personally I believe the gold market is often manipulated and believe that simple supply of and demand for physical gold is most usually of less importance to its price than market sentiment; this creates something of a chicken and egg situation as sentmients manifest into prices through derivative trades. Currently my view is that gold will probably go lower as money is moved into US dollars which earn interest and is the world's currency of last resort to buy food.
PLATINUM: . Platinum coud be substituted formore expensive palladium in petrol driven vehicles but the re-jigging of vehicle production to facilitate that change could be expensive and cause a decrease in the two metals price differential thus negating some or all of the aparent advantage of such a change over for vehicle manufacturers. Hydrogen fuel cell requiremernts will likely increase demand for platinum and there look likely to be new nano-technology applications for metal. Relatively large amounts of platinum are mined in the Republic of South Africa from where optimistic press releases concerning elctricity production have recently emerged; during the last decade platinum miners have complained that energy supply failures have hampered mining and refining of Platinum,
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