Recently, palladium has surprised investors. Its price neared gold for the first time in past 16 years. Some market participants have never seen such an unusual occurrence. By the way, prices for stock futures almost equaled while the spot palladium went even further, reaching nearly the same level as gold.

Palladium started rising in October when experts noted a shortage of supply in the market which still persists. Then, a snowball effect was triggered. The deficit led to an increase in demand, and consequently, a rise in prices which, in its turn, entailed speculations. As a result, in early December the spot palladium hit the record high at 1,230.90 dollars per troy ounce. Moreover, palladium prices rose even above gold prices on the intraday basis. “For the moment, we don’t see anything changing; the metal remains in demand for industrial uses, speculators are covering their positions, lease market is very tight, and palladium forwards are in backwardation. We could see some higher prices from here in the very short term,” expert in precious metals Jonathan Butler said.  

Palladium is still widely used for industrial purposes, and the speculating volume is likely to increase even more. Overall, the year of 2018 is going to be very good for the metal. Palladium is the only asset among precious and industrial metals that has been showing great performance so far this year.