Some insights for an old salty dog, observing the GameStop, Robin Hood, Reddit sea change. Standing here on the deck of this wooden sailing ship, recent experience has brought the horizon and the future close enough to taste the spray of the new waves of change. Money Flows - The amount of money in the system is so massive that it collectively is bigger than any single idea, or entity or institution. Targeting - While there may be tens of thousands of ships in the fleet, somehow all of the wind finds itself blowing on just a few. Communication - This occurs as a function of the universally available, immediate ability to communicate to a vast collective of cohorts. Challenges to Conventional Thinking...
If South Africa was Canada, do you think PGM production would be greater? You bet your informed PGM buttocks it would! South Africa produces 70% of the world's platinum and along with Russia, dominates the production of platinum group metals. Platinum group metals are not complicated. They are the rarest metals on planet earth. They have properties like no other element on the periodic table. These properties are extraordinary, unique, remarkable, and have proven essential in a modern civilization. There are no substitutes. You don't have your needed PGM? Then you don't have the component you need to make your product, period! And you do not need to be Elon to project future demand. This stuff is in the ground,...
Let's say you are General Motor's Purchasing Manager for platinum, palladium and rhodium, all essential ingredients in every single car's catalytic converter. How much should you have on hand? Hmn. Enough so you are never in the position of shutting down your company's entire production line! Do you have the budget for that amount? Have you communicated to management current pricing and the market's tightness? Are you willing to urge that you build rhodium inventories at all time highs of $20,000 plus per ounce? Do you truly understand how tight the market is? And in this already in deficit market, what if investors come into the market in a big way? How does that change things? Frankly, I wouldn't want...
We are all watching extraordinary moves in the market, from Bitcoin, to Gamestop, to AMC, to remarkable flows creating huge dislocations. My view? First, money flows are bigger than the market, creating distortions that I have never seen before. This is something to think about. But the real point? Just as a driver for the massive bids behind GME, for example, is apparently a short position, the market is short platinum group metals, and doesn't even know it. All of the PGMs, platinum, palladium, rhodium, iridium and ruthenium, are in deficit. They are critical and essential to the functioning of our civilian and military economies, and are pervasive throughout as industrial, strategic and precious metals. As I have expressed so...
Billions of years ago, the earth was bombarded with asteroids that deposited platinum group metals (PGMs) deep in the earths core. There are only a few places on the planet where the PGMs have worked their way close to the surface. PGMs are the rarest commodities on earth. They include platinum, palladium, rhodium, iridium, ruthenium and osmium. These metals are industrial, strategic, and precious. They are essential for the functioning of the civilian and military economy. There is no substitution, outside of the group, and all are trading in deficit. Production can only be increased a few percentage points a year, and there is very little above ground inventory. Russia does have the only strategic stockpile and in many ways...
