What are everyone's thoughts on collecting, stacking Rhodium & Palladium Ingots/Rounds? I was thinking about possibly venturing into these two if there is any positive going on in these two metals. Thanks. Tom
Personally, I would avoid them. I may be totally wrong, but I just don't see that the future demand would be worth it. Gold and silver have guaranteed markets, but rhodium and palladium are speculative at best.
Thanks. I know little about the two and have not followed any market reports on them. Sorry about the typo in the header.
I don't know a lot about these two as investments and I have only seen rhodium used as an enhancement on coins privately or from the Canadian Mint. I seem to remember that it resists tarnish and can be mixed in with silver, but I would think the spot market is highly speculative. I agree with sakata and look for more traditional metals with established markets.
For example, here is an article about palladium: http://www.scrapregister.com/news/42308/palladium-vulnerable-to-correction-if-car-sales-soften
In my opinion there bad other than for rhodium to hav a tiny piece as a novelty. Palladium: Used to be the 4th most precious metal, now for unexpected reasons its out of the top 10. IDK exactly why but I dont recommend it. Rhodium: It is way to risky, prices change from $4,000 an ounce to $330 an ounce. I dont recommend it either, its a loose cannon. -SC
Rhodium is also used to plate white gold jewelry. When they add the nickel into the gold to make the gold silvery, it takes away the luster. To make it look more like platinum, a small amount of rhodium is plated to it. -SC
Iron Man used palladium to build his suit. Other than that I am not sure of it's other real world applications.
I used a rhodium example in my post above. Palladium is commonly used in monolithic ceramic capacitors (MLCCs) in electronic, with ceramic, iron, nickel, and silver. They are tiny! They determine the amount of energy stored in batteries, etc. -SC
Unless the U.S. mint goes ahead and releases the Palladium eagle I'd avoid personally based on the fact that liquidating them is likely to present a hassle.
Palladium has been used in multiple coins. Palladium Canadian Maples as well as Palladium Soviet Ballerinas are available as bullion options (the premium can get steep but one can find decent deals occasionally). Palladium has been going up lately and has closed the gap on platinum (palladium has been replacing platinum for some uses like catalytic converters). That could mean it is overpriced or it might continue its ascent. Personally, I wouldn't invest heavily in it, but purchasing a single coin, especially if the Palladium Eagle is released this year, could be a good introduction to the metal. Here is a list of many of the coins made from Palladium: http://www.rene-finn.de/English/palladiumtabeng.html
Palladium is often used in catalytic converters . It can be used in many of the same applications that platinum is used in, and is used to be much cheaper so there is a high industrial demand for palladium. Annual palladium production is only about 6 million oz. US production is only 360,000 oz. A US palladium coin could easily consume a significant chuck of the annual production meaning industry would have to turn to non-domestic sources worsening our trade deficit.
Palladium is enormously useful in chemical processes, but the majority of demand is still from auto catalytic converters as I understand it. I'm not going long on anything dependent on the gasoline engine industry any more. That said, Russia is still a major producer, and the resulting political influences should help keep the market stirred up for the foreseeable future.
Yes they do. I'm constantly having to monitor my ex-companies mix that I personally selected. Have been doing well on Small, Mid Cap and Large Cap but I'm over leveraged in my GIC stable fund which is yielding almost nada. Time to adjust my holdings again. Last quarter was only +2.6%. The quarter before was just around 5%. It's a constant battle.
