The palladium price has not taken a break yet.
Palladium is in a relentless bull market. The price of the silvery-gray metal soared in early 2016. The price more than doubled since then, and it shows little sign of slowing down.
You can see what I mean in the chart below:
Automobile demand is the sole driver of this market. Cars consume 80% of the palladium supply. It’s used in catalytic converters — the big, blocky things that sit behind the exhaust pipe. The palladium converts pollutants in exhaust into less harmful compounds.
That used to be a role platinum served. However, platinum prices soared, so car makers turned to palladium.
Platinum remains the favorite catalyst for diesel cars, but gas-powered cars use palladium. And there’s a bull market in gasoline engines…
Today, an ounce of palladium costs more than an ounce of platinum. That’s the first time since 2001.
Remember, a good natural resource investor is a contrarian. While palladium prices soared this year, platinum has not.
That’s why the juice for investors today is in platinum.
Historically, you could buy an ounce of palladium with just half an ounce of platinum. You could also buy an ounce of gold with just three-quarters of an ounce of platinum.
Today, that’s reversed. It would cost you over an ounce of platinum to buy an ounce of palladium. It would cost you a whopping 1.4 ounces of platinum to buy an ounce of gold.
As I wrote in June:
The problem is that platinum’s supply is dwindling, while gold is not. Platinum can be recovered from industrial processes by recycling … but it isn’t 100% effective, so we’re losing platinum every year.
All this data points us toward platinum as the metal to own right now.
