Source: Morningstar. Performance measured by S&P GSCI indices. TR%, USD [1st May 2020 – 30th April 2021]
Commodity prices have come roaring back, but is gold the main beneficiary or have other precious metals stolen a march? Dr. Nisha Long takes a closer look.
Commodities rallied due to the weakening dollar, as well as demand surging for hard commodities such as precious metals, gold, platinum, palladium, and silver. There is currently a deficit on the global palladium market, which is partly driven by mines owned by palladium giant Nornickel flooding in February 2021.
Over the year to the end of April 2021 palladium, as measured by the S&P GSCI Palladium index, rose 48.9%. However, this was not the best-performing metal over this time. Silver rose 72.8% over the same one-year period and has seen demand rise due to its applications in industrial applications, such as solar power generation and 5G mobile phone technology.
Following palladium’s path, platinum returned 48.2% with a surge in performance coming within the last few months. However, gold was shadowed by the other precious metals and returned just 4.3% in comparison.
