Gold has raced up in price more than 50% in the last year. Other precious metals have gone along for the ride including platinum and palladium. So, is this the end of fiat currency as we know it, as gold bugs have claimed? has the commodities bubble finally burst and will gold prices head back south? What are the forces jostling the global metals markets?
Boris Schmitz-Thiersen's family has been selling jewelry in the same location in Cologne, Germany, for more than 100 years. He has begun offering bracelets made of a peculiar white metal mined in South Africa. "It's pure palladium," he explains. "Pretty, isn't it?" Yes - and relatively cheap, trading around $450 per troy ounce, compared to just under $2,000 for the same amount of platinum, and about $1,000 for gold. Silver, by contrast, is trading at between $17 and $18 per ounce.
The decision to sell palladium instead of platinum is one of those innocent ideas that if adopted by all the jewelry stores in the universe, could have major ramifications for the price of these two most precious of metals. Jewelry currently accounts for about 20% of total platinum demand, but that, unlike gold, platinum and palladium are primarily industrial metals and not stores of value.
"If prices of platinum get too high, you could see a substitution on the industrial side to palladium," she says. "This is why I'm more bullish on palladium than I am on platinum."
Yet it is platinum's secondary function as a precious metal that is driving prices to the stratosphere.
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