More mileage in palladium

Palladium reached a near-two-year high of almost $800 an ounce last week. And there may well be further to go.

Andrew Van Sickle
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published
in Features

Palladium prices jumped by a fifth in 2016, and they have made a solid start to 2017, reaching a near-two-year high of almost $800 an ounce last week. And there may well be further to go.

The metal is a key component in catalytic converters, and the car industry accounts for80% of demand, notes Ira Iosebashvili in Barron's. China and the US use palladium in catalytic converters; Europe favours platinum.

Both US and Chinese car sales have been solid of late, with the latter rising at their fastest pace in three years last year and the former potentially set for another boost thanks to President Trump's fiscal stimulus. China's pollution problem is forcing it to tighten car emission standards, adds Chen Lin on Equities.com, which implies a steady rise in demand for palladium over the next few years.

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On the supply side, South Africa, the world's top supplier, is not expected to increase mined output much. Analysts reckon that dwindling sales from Russia's stockpiles means they are probably nearly depleted. TD Securities thinks the market deficit could double this year.

Andrew Van Sickle
Andrew Van Sickle
Editor, MoneyWeek

Andrew is the editor of MoneyWeek magazine. He grew up in Vienna and studied at the University of St Andrews, where he gained a first-class MA in geography & international relations.

After graduating he began to contribute to the foreign page of The Week and soon afterwards joined MoneyWeek at its inception in October 2000. He helped Merryn Somerset Webb establish it as Britain’s best-selling financial magazine, contributing to every section of the publication and specialising in macroeconomics and stockmarkets, before going part-time.

His freelance projects have included a 2009 relaunch of The Pharma Letter, where he covered corporate news and political developments in the German pharmaceuticals market for two years, and a multiyear stint as deputy editor of the Barclays account at Redwood, a marketing agency.

Andrew has been editing MoneyWeek since 2018, and continues to specialise in investment and news in German-speaking countries owing to his fluent command of the language.

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