Neat stuff on platinum, from a SUFfering hamster.
"Link Between Gold and Platinum Is Cut As Metals' Fundamentals Part Paths"
"...While once they (SA platinum producers) shuddered at any drop in the gold price as the two precious metals tended to rise or fall in tandem, they now say the relationship is finally severed in investors' minds.
"The fundamentals of the two metals have asserted themselves in the price, and we believe platinum's fundamentals are quite solid and we see relative price stability. We're quite confident," said Dorian Emmett, commercial director at Anglo American Platinum Corp., the world's premier producer, based here. "Platinum doesn't have the above-ground-surface stocks that gold has - there's very little," Mr. Emmett says. This means that supply and demand are much better matched, leading to price stability.
Gold is trading at around $253 a troy ounce on the European spot market while platinum is trading at around $353 an ounce.
Derek Engelbrecht, marketing manager at South Africa's Impala Platinum Holdings Ltd., the globe's No. 2 producer, says, "the fall in the gold price has cemented the idea that the link is broken, even though it had been broken well before bullion's fall."
Platinum is a metal of the future, and every year, many more high-technology applications are discovered, from computer hard disks to new fuel-cell vehicles where platinum is used in the proton exchange membrane technology for electric cars.
Gold is mined in many countries, from Latin American to Asia, with South Africa as the largest producer. But platinum is mined almost exclusively in southern Africa, and South Africa in particular. Only Russia poses any competition to South Africa's overriding dominance in the metal's production. Last year, South Africa produced 3.68 million ounces."
(Full story can be found in the Wall Street Journal, 7-26-99, pg. B8B)
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