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Gold Rally Upstaged as Precious Metals Rise in Slipstream

Gold Rally Gets Upstaged as Precious Metals Rise in Slipstream

Gold Rally Upstaged as Precious Metals Rise in Slipstream
One kilogram fine gold bars sit stacked in the precious metals vault (Photographer: Michaela Handrek-Rehle/Bloomberg))

(Bloomberg) -- Gold’s rally has grabbed a lot of investor attention, but other precious metals are making a strong bid to take the spotlight.

Gold rose 19% this year through mid-August, the most among the main precious metals, on prospects for lower interest rates and demand for a refuge from slowing economic growth.

Now, investors looking for cheaper entry into havens have helped widen the rally to silver and platinum, which surged the past few weeks to surpass gold’s 2019 gains. Palladium has also rebounded.

“For the investors that have been nervous for a while and really loaded up on gold, it’s more of, ‘I’ve reached my max comfort level on gold, lets see what else I can add to it that might be more attractive from the value standpoint,’” Austin Pickle, investment strategy analyst at Wells Fargo Investment Institute, said by phone. “For investors looking for precious-metals exposure, we still prefer silver and platinum over gold.”

The following charts examine the case for a sustained rally across precious metals.

Portents in Proportions

While gold’s rally has stalled this month, banks including Citigroup Inc., JPMorgan Chase & Co. and BNP Paribas SA recently boosted their price forecasts. With gold prices still well above historical averages compared with silver and platinum, gains in gold could mean further increases for the other metals as well.

Even with silver surging more than 4% since mid-August while gold slipped, an ounce of gold still buys about 82 ounces of silver, topping the average of 67 ounces over the past decade.

Gold Rally Upstaged as Precious Metals Rise in Slipstream

It’s a similar story for platinum, where an ounce of the pricier metal buys 1.59 ounces, compared with a 10-year average of 1.11. Platinum, commonly used in auto-pollution controls, has jumped 12% since mid-August. It had struggled to get investors’ attention as diesel-vehicle sales decline and manufacturing slumps amid the U.S.-China trade war.

Gold Rally Upstaged as Precious Metals Rise in Slipstream

“Gold in U.S. dollar terms is at six-year highs,” Wells Fargo’s Pickle said. “There’s so much more room for people to say this still looks attractive in absolute terms and it’s super attractive versus gold,” he said, referring to silver and platinum.

Citigroup also sees platinum as a “cheaper” haven asset that investors capitalized on to play catch up with gold. While the metal is likely to continue consolidation in the near-term, analysts including Aakash Doshi said they remain bullish on platinum over the next 12 months on expectations of an improvement in automotive demand, according to a note Tuesday.

Generating Interest

BNP Paribas raised its gold-price forecast amid expectations that the Federal Reserve will cut U.S. interest rates four times by mid-2020. With global economies at risk of tipping into recession, the analysts expect central banks in both developed and emerging markets will leave rates low or cut them further. Silver and platinum would benefit from that as well: precious metals don’t offer a yield, so low rates make them more competitive against assets that offer interest.

Gold Rally Upstaged as Precious Metals Rise in Slipstream

“What has happened over last year is rates have become more important as they became more of a focus for the market,” Chris Louney, vice president of commodity strategy at RBC Capital Markets, said by phone. Such low rates pushed negative-yielding debt to about $17 trillion globally at the end of August, brightening the appeal of precious metals.

To contact the reporter on this story: Justina Vasquez in New York at jvasquez57@bloomberg.net

To contact the editors responsible for this story: Luzi Ann Javier at ljavier@bloomberg.net, Joe Richter, Steven Frank

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