Rhodium – začína sa kríza?

The rhodium price has begun to climb. Is this just a resonance with the climbing price of platinum or has something happened with the fundamentals of rhodium independent of those of platinum?

As an aside, I need to say yet one more time that although gold may be a store of value, it is a poor investment compared to many other metals. Rhodium is one of them. Had you purchased physical rhodium anytime during 2003 and sold it yesterday, January 9. 2008, you would have made more than 1,000% on your investment!

The platinum group metal (PGM) rhodium is obtained almost exclusively as a byproduct of primary platinum mining in the Merensky Reef and UG2 geologic formations of southern Africa.

The supply of new rhodium is almost completely dependent on the continued mining of platinum in southern Africa; I say, almost, because the second largest source of rhodium is now the recycling of automotive emission control catalytic converters from the U.S., Western Europe, and Japan from the so-called ‘rubber tire mine.’

This is because those three regions mandate a maximum allowable emission by vehicles of acid-forming oxides of nitrogen, and the only known way to efficiently and economically reduce those oxides to harmless elemental nitrogen is to pass them over a heated rhodium surface, which is provided as a coating in the honeycomb structure of an automotive emission control catalytic converter.

Zdroj: tinyurl.com/2ypspz

15.01.2008

"In the absence of the gold standard, there is no way to protect savings from confiscation through inflation. There is no safe store of value."   Alan Greenspan