The Iranian War:
An Interesting
Development

In past crisis situations and in particular in 2008 and 2020 platinum went down and gold went up. It is remarkable that so far this has not happened, this could be the first indication that investors are becoming more aware of the store of value qualities of platinum.

I still do not want to exclude that if the present Middle East crisis lasts much longer platinum will go somewhat down. However based on the past and the present platinum fundamentals, I expect thereafter a quick and substantial price recovery.

I make use of this Newsflash to draw your attention once more to the superior potential platinum presents at the actual price of being a much better store of value than gold because the following long-term fundamentals are clearly in favour of platinum:

• Historically platinum has been more expensive than gold.
• There is an enormous above ground stock of gold with Central Banks and investors. If only one Central Bank (the Bank of England did so at their peril) would start to sell (at the moment Poland is considering to do so to finance their armament) it could depress the gold market for quite a while.
• There is comparatively very little platinum with investors apart from jewellery applied platinum.
• Gold is now 2.5 times the price of platinum.
• The average mining cost of both gold and platinum is only US$ 1000, this implicates that gold is now sold at five times its production cost and platinum only twice.
• Most of the platinum production is used for technical purposes and this is only expected to increase
• An important amount is used in the automobile industry and contrary to earlier expectations this amount will only gradually decrease.
• In order to maintain a balanced market, there is maximum 500,000 ounces of platinum available. As a consequence, only a small increase of investors demand will cause a substantial price rise.

Based on the aforesaid issues we expect more and more investors to draw the right conclusion and invest in platinum and or switch part of their gold holding to platinum.

If and when our expectation is correct platinum will again exceed the price of gold. At present prices this would implicate a move from US$ 2150 to circa US$ 6000. With actual high gold and inflated stock prices I do not see an investment with more profit potential. Recently World Platinum Council published its first 2026 quarterly report. I strongly advise to read their publications which are available for free. The quality and depth of their reviews are unmatched. In their report they expect pure investors’ demand in 2026 to be 500,000 ounces and they expect a deficit of 200,000 ounces, more or less confirming our aforementioned views.

Important Moral and Environmental Aspects of Gold and Platinum Mining

Contrary to Platinum mining a substantial part of gold mining is now not only illegal, but also causing huge pollution. Already only for this reason ESG (Environmental, Social and Governance) conscious investors ought to think twice before they invest in gold instead of platinum. I am really surprised that this issue has not yet received more publicity.

— THE OBSERVER