Any change in demand for minor precious metals such as iridiumm, rhodium and ruthenium can move the prices up or down very quickly, and it looks like these three metals could have some strong upside this year, although the recent debt crisis in the EU and China's need to battle rising inflation, have added somewhat of a shadow over the group.
Industrial demand had been picking up, giving all three possibilities of moving upwards, but again, the changing economic conditions have skewed that a little, although the fundamentals seem to be sound going forward, although it's a matter of how strongly they'll perform in light of the fears swirling around the markets.
Demand for raw materials in general is suspect now, not that there will necessarily be a huge pullback, but if there is a slowdown of even 1 percent or a little more, that's enough to changes things up quite a bit, especially with the minor metals.
The problem all three of these metals face at this time is the pace of how the prices have been rising, which seems to be too quickly in relationship to the demand picture. That implies there are speculators influencing the market to some degree, so we'll have to keep up with the demand picture to be sure the prices accurately reflect the market before putting out money down.
That means we'll probably have to wait for at least a small correction of some type, while watching the EU and China as to whether they're cutting back on importing these metals or not.
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