Trevor Raymond

YOU have to wonder if at times Trevor Raymond feels like a down-at-heel comedian who resorts to tapping the microphone and asking “Is this on?” after getting no audience response to his jokes. Raymond is no second-rate comedian but his audiences are ignoring him as if he were. 

That’s one way of describing the disconnect between supply and demand in platinum and the metal’s lacklustre price. Raymond’s World Platinum Investment Council (WPIC) has reported deficits in its quarterly assessments for the past two years. In its latest prognostication it says another supply deficit is likely for 2025, estimated at 539,000 ounces, driven by a 2% increase in demand from the automotive sector. According to Raymond “ongoing headwinds present downside risks to supply into next year especially as miners reassess production plans and restructure operations”. 

All very doom and gloom, but platinum consumers and investors simply don’t seem to be listening and, if they are, they don’t seem to care. The platinum price remains stubbornly below $1,000/oz, where it has been for most of the past three years and the palladium price has collapsed from around $3,200/oz in early 2022 to current levels around $900, where it sits below the platinum price. It has set investment analysts wondering whether there’s been a fundamental change in how platinum and its sister metals palladium and rhodium are priced, with the growth in the futures market and the settling of long-term contracts using the spot price identified as possible factors.