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Got platinum/palladium?

Platinum's hot, palladium's hot. So let's take a quick look at what's happening in the platinum group metals (PGMs) space.

We recently covered the news of some newly-launched exchange-traded commodities (ETCs) in the precious metals groups. ETF Securities and Swiss bank ZKB both recently introduced ETCs representing physical platinum and palladium.

No platinum or palladium ETFs currently exist in the U.S. More info on the European PGMs ETCs from Reuters.

Demand for the ETFs has been strong, and additional demand has started to come on for palladium as jewelry use, speculative buying, and auto/industrial use has increased.

Some analysts are starting to see demand for platinum shifting over to palladium, and think that the current gap between platinum and palladium prices could be narrowed.

We talked about the trends that could drive a resurgence in palladium demand last spring; for more on this see, "Metals action and palladium notes".

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