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Palladium Outlook 2022: Auto Demand to Determine Price Movement

Click here to read the previous palladium outlook.Palladium prices entered 2021 elevated by supply issues from the previous year, a factor that was further compounded by a resurgence in automotive demand amid historically low inventories.Tailwinds pushed.

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Click here to read the previous palladium outlook.

Palladium prices entered 2021 elevated by supply issues from the previous year, a factor that was further compounded by a resurgence in automotive demand amid historically low inventories.

Tailwinds pushed prices from US$2,336 per ounce in January to an all-time high of US$2,842 at the end of April.

While lingering supply chain disruptions benefited the platinum-group metal during the first half of last year, values for the autocatalyst metal were pushed lower during H2.


“The rise in palladium prices in the first half of (2021) was predominantly due to expectations of supply tightness amid strengthening global economic activity and anticipation of a surge in palladium demand from the auto sector,” Steven Burke, economist at FocusEconomics, told the Investing News Network (INN).

“Prices peaked in early May, in tandem with global manufacturing PMIs, and have since trended lower — hitting the lowest level since early 2020 in recent weeks,” he added.


2021 palladium price performance

By the end of September, palladium prices had sunk to a year-to-date low of US$1,786. The metal, which had started Q3 at US$2,740, had shed 34 percent by the end of the quarter. At the end of December, palladium was still holding in the US$1,800 range, although it was some 21 percent lower than its January value.

 Palladium trends 2021: Supply surplus drags price lower


Optimism around economic recovery paired with a 2020 production curtailment at Anglo American Platinum’s (LSE:AAL,OTC Pink:AGPPF) South African operations aided in palladium’s H1 2021 price positivity.

As the semiconductor shortage stretched into the year, the palladium market, which had been in a supply deficit, swung into a surplus for the first time since 2010, according to Metals Focus consultant Dale Munro.

“Russia contributes around 40 percent of primary palladium mine supply,” he said via email. “Thus, the two major incidents at Nornickel (MCX:GMKN) in early 2020 — a concentrator building collapse and mine flooding — had a major impact on global supply, estimated to be around 400,000 ounces of production lost for the year.”

Residual supply issues out of Russia weren’t enough to offset rising production out of South Africa as Anglo American Platinum processed stockpiled ore.

“280,000 ounces of semi-finished inventory accumulated as a result of the Anglo converter plant shutdown in 2020, boosted country output,” Munro said. “In general, across all regions, mine operations were successful at navigating the COVID pandemic challenges with only marginal direct impact on production volumes.”

As South African miners upped output, they also benefited from higher prices early in the year. “Meanwhile, the high basket price, particularly from increased rhodium prices, pushed margins up and allowed miners operational flexibility to pursue higher-cost production,” Munro said. “This was particularly relevant in South Africa.”

With supply growing, prices were impacted by softening demand throughout H2 2021, particularly in the automotive industry. “The biggest factor that impacted palladium demand this year is the protracted and deepening chip shortage,” said Wilma Swarts, director of platinum-group metals at Metals Focus, in December. “Vehicle production forecasts for 2021 were cut by around 10 million vehicles from the start of the year until now.”

For his part, Ralph Aldis, portfolio manager at US Global Investors (NASDAQ:GROW), told INN that palladium's H2 decline was largely facilitated by reports of its substitution in the automotive industry.

“We've seen some stories where the auto industry is beginning the substitution process, and that is what's helping platinum a little bit, but it's coming at the expense of the palladium price,” he said.

Ironically, palladium became the automotive metal of choice to reduce emissions in catalytic converters when platinum prices trended into the US$1,000 per ounce range in the early 2000s. Now the industry is pivoting back to platinum after prices for palladium neared US$3,000 in April 2021.

Due to its close ties to the automotive sector, palladium also faced headwinds from the global semiconductor shortage, which has impeded growth across numerous sectors.

“The palladium prices drifted lower also on the back of auto demand being curtailed because of the chip shortage,” Aldis added. “So that was a knock-on effect for palladium there.”

Palladium outlook 2022: Chip shortage fueling uncertainty


It is estimated that the semiconductor shortage cost the global auto sector US$210 billion in lost revenue in 2021 as producers cut output by 13 percent.

“The ongoing semiconductor shortage has hammered auto production, and in turn demand for palladium, which has weighed on prices,” Burke of FocusEconomics explained to INN. “Given that the shortage of chips is expected to linger into (2022), demand for palladium from the auto sector should only rise at a modest pace (this year) — after declining markedly in 2021.”

While 2022 is expected to bring some relief in terms of the chip shortage, Burke noted that the auto sector sits near the bottom of the list in terms of importance to chip manufacturers.

“Without increased global capacity levels, the market will remain extremely tight and keep auto production relatively downbeat,” he said. “A major issue for securing semiconductors in the auto sector at the moment is linked to low margins for suppliers. Chip makers’ profit margins for supplying semiconductors to the auto industry are extremely low in comparison to other sectors and make up a small fraction of revenue, which makes them less attractive for suppliers to produce in the best of times.”

As a result, the chip issue is expected to be “a headache for automakers for the foreseeable future,” as further supply headwinds pose additional downside risks for the auto sector, and thus demand for palladium.

Metals Focus is a bit more optimistic, forecasting an uptick in both auto demand and production in 2022.

“From a demand perspective we are expecting a recovery in vehicle production, which will lift demand,” Swarts said. “However, the revised light-duty production forecast for 2022 is still well below the production forecast previously anticipated, and will accordingly still weigh on demand from the automotive sector.”

Palladium outlook 2022: Volatility to weigh on price growth 


By the end of December 2021, palladium prices had declined by 32 percent from July’s value of US$2,724. Prices for the metal continued to hold in the US$1,850 to US$1,900 range at the start of 2022.

Although vehicle manufacturing is anticipated to remain below pre-pandemic levels in 2022, Metals Focus is calling for palladium values to rise to a quarterly average of US$2,300 by Q4.

According to Munro, the move will likely be triggered by the replenishing of inventories, which will consume a majority of the surplus material. 2022’s forecast surplus could also be smaller than expected, as he pointed out.

“(2022’s) palladium mine supply is expected to increase on growth from Russia as Nornickel returns to full production,” he said. “Q1 is a seasonally weak quarter for South Africa due to the holiday season; however, annual output is expected to be broadly flat for the full year.”

The Metals Focus consultant continued, “Strong basket pricing is facilitating increased sustaining capital expenditure, which should help bring production stability. The ramp up of development projects is required to offset declining volumes from mature operations; these volumes are inherently more risked, so there is potential for some guidance misses.”

In the years ahead, new production will be key in meeting sector demand. For US Global Investors’ Aldis, this means looking to Australia — specifically, Chalice Mining (ASX:CHN,OTCQB:CGMLF), which Aldis noted has made a significant platinum, palladium, cobalt and nickel discovery at its Julimar project in Western Australia.

As South African operations age and Russian miners deal with issues around melting permafrost destabilizing infrastructure, these new discoveries will become more important in meeting future demand.

“You're going to have other sources of palladium to choose from in the future other than South Africa and Russia," said Aldis, also pointing to North American producers. “You've got several companies that are in that space actively trying to add more production or find a deposit that can be monetized somewhat.”

Echoing the forecast of Metals Focus, FocusEconomics is calling for palladium to average US$2,300 in 2022, a US$134 decline from 2021’s estimate of US$2,434.

“Substitution of palladium for platinum should outweigh substitution of rhodium for palladium,” Burke commented to INN. “Moreover, tepid demand from the auto sector and electric vehicles’ rising global share of automobile sales should weigh on palladium prices.”

Don't forget to follow us @INN_Resource for real-time updates!

Securities Disclosure: I, Georgia Williams, hold no direct investment interest in any company mentioned in this article.

Editorial Disclosure: The Investing News Network does not guarantee the accuracy or thoroughness of the information reported in the interviews it conducts. The opinions expressed in these interviews do not reflect the opinions of the Investing News Network and do not constitute investment advice. All readers are encouraged to perform their own due diligence.

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Looking Back At COVID’s Authoritarian Regimes

After having moved from Canada to the United States, partly to be wealthier and partly to be freer (those two are connected, by the way), I was shocked,…

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After having moved from Canada to the United States, partly to be wealthier and partly to be freer (those two are connected, by the way), I was shocked, in March 2020, when President Trump and most US governors imposed heavy restrictions on people’s freedom. The purpose, said Trump and his COVID-19 advisers, was to “flatten the curve”: shut down people’s mobility for two weeks so that hospitals could catch up with the expected demand from COVID patients. In her book Silent Invasion, Dr. Deborah Birx, the coordinator of the White House Coronavirus Task Force, admitted that she was scrambling during those two weeks to come up with a reason to extend the lockdowns for much longer. As she put it, “I didn’t have the numbers in front of me yet to make the case for extending it longer, but I had two weeks to get them.” In short, she chose the goal and then tried to find the data to justify the goal. This, by the way, was from someone who, along with her task force colleague Dr. Anthony Fauci, kept talking about the importance of the scientific method. By the end of April 2020, the term “flatten the curve” had all but disappeared from public discussion.

Now that we are four years past that awful time, it makes sense to look back and see whether those heavy restrictions on the lives of people of all ages made sense. I’ll save you the suspense. They didn’t. The damage to the economy was huge. Remember that “the economy” is not a term used to describe a big machine; it’s a shorthand for the trillions of interactions among hundreds of millions of people. The lockdowns and the subsequent federal spending ballooned the budget deficit and consequent federal debt. The effect on children’s learning, not just in school but outside of school, was huge. These effects will be with us for a long time. It’s not as if there wasn’t another way to go. The people who came up with the idea of lockdowns did so on the basis of abstract models that had not been tested. They ignored a model of human behavior, which I’ll call Hayekian, that is tested every day.

These are the opening two paragraphs of my latest Defining Ideas article, “Looking Back at COVID’s Authoritarian Regimes,” Defining Ideas, March 14, 2024.

Another excerpt:

That wasn’t the only uncertainty. My daughter Karen lived in San Francisco and made her living teaching Pilates. San Francisco mayor London Breed shut down all the gyms, and so there went my daughter’s business. (The good news was that she quickly got online and shifted many of her clients to virtual Pilates. But that’s another story.) We tried to see her every six weeks or so, whether that meant our driving up to San Fran or her driving down to Monterey. But were we allowed to drive to see her? In that first month and a half, we simply didn’t know.

Read the whole thing, which is longer than usual.

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Problems After COVID-19 Vaccination More Prevalent Among Naturally Immune: Study

Problems After COVID-19 Vaccination More Prevalent Among Naturally Immune: Study

Authored by Zachary Stieber via The Epoch Times (emphasis…

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Problems After COVID-19 Vaccination More Prevalent Among Naturally Immune: Study

Authored by Zachary Stieber via The Epoch Times (emphasis ours),

People who recovered from COVID-19 and received a COVID-19 shot were more likely to suffer adverse reactions, researchers in Europe are reporting.

A medical worker administers a dose of the Pfizer-BioNTech COVID-19 vaccine to a patient at a vaccination center in Ancenis-Saint-Gereon, France, on Nov. 17, 2021. (Stephane Mahe//Reuters)

Participants in the study were more likely to experience an adverse reaction after vaccination regardless of the type of shot, with one exception, the researchers found.

Across all vaccine brands, people with prior COVID-19 were 2.6 times as likely after dose one to suffer an adverse reaction, according to the new study. Such people are commonly known as having a type of protection known as natural immunity after recovery.

People with previous COVID-19 were also 1.25 times as likely after dose 2 to experience an adverse reaction.

The findings held true across all vaccine types following dose one.

Of the female participants who received the Pfizer-BioNTech vaccine, for instance, 82 percent who had COVID-19 previously experienced an adverse reaction after their first dose, compared to 59 percent of females who did not have prior COVID-19.

The only exception to the trend was among males who received a second AstraZeneca dose. The percentage of males who suffered an adverse reaction was higher, 33 percent to 24 percent, among those without a COVID-19 history.

Participants who had a prior SARS-CoV-2 infection (confirmed with a positive test) experienced at least one adverse reaction more often after the 1st dose compared to participants who did not have prior COVID-19. This pattern was observed in both men and women and across vaccine brands,” Florence van Hunsel, an epidemiologist with the Netherlands Pharmacovigilance Centre Lareb, and her co-authors wrote.

There were only slightly higher odds of the naturally immune suffering an adverse reaction following receipt of a Pfizer or Moderna booster, the researchers also found.

The researchers performed what’s known as a cohort event monitoring study, following 29,387 participants as they received at least one dose of a COVID-19 vaccine. The participants live in a European country such as Belgium, France, or Slovakia.

Overall, three-quarters of the participants reported at least one adverse reaction, although some were minor such as injection site pain.

Adverse reactions described as serious were reported by 0.24 percent of people who received a first or second dose and 0.26 percent for people who received a booster. Different examples of serious reactions were not listed in the study.

Participants were only specifically asked to record a range of minor adverse reactions (ADRs). They could provide details of other reactions in free text form.

“The unsolicited events were manually assessed and coded, and the seriousness was classified based on international criteria,” researchers said.

The free text answers were not provided by researchers in the paper.

The authors note, ‘In this manuscript, the focus was not on serious ADRs and adverse events of special interest.’” Yet, in their highlights section they state, “The percentage of serious ADRs in the study is low for 1st and 2nd vaccination and booster.”

Dr. Joel Wallskog, co-chair of the group React19, which advocates for people who were injured by vaccines, told The Epoch Times: “It is intellectually dishonest to set out to study minor adverse events after COVID-19 vaccination then make conclusions about the frequency of serious adverse events. They also fail to provide the free text data.” He added that the paper showed “yet another study that is in my opinion, deficient by design.”

Ms. Hunsel did not respond to a request for comment.

She and other researchers listed limitations in the paper, including how they did not provide data broken down by country.

The paper was published by the journal Vaccine on March 6.

The study was funded by the European Medicines Agency and the Dutch government.

No authors declared conflicts of interest.

Some previous papers have also found that people with prior COVID-19 infection had more adverse events following COVID-19 vaccination, including a 2021 paper from French researchers. A U.S. study identified prior COVID-19 as a predictor of the severity of side effects.

Some other studies have determined COVID-19 vaccines confer little or no benefit to people with a history of infection, including those who had received a primary series.

The U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention still recommends people who recovered from COVID-19 receive a COVID-19 vaccine, although a number of other health authorities have stopped recommending the shot for people who have prior COVID-19.

Another New Study

In another new paper, South Korean researchers outlined how they found people were more likely to report certain adverse reactions after COVID-19 vaccination than after receipt of another vaccine.

The reporting of myocarditis, a form of heart inflammation, or pericarditis, a related condition, was nearly 20 times as high among children as the reporting odds following receipt of all other vaccines, the researchers found.

The reporting odds were also much higher for multisystem inflammatory syndrome or Kawasaki disease among adolescent COVID-19 recipients.

Researchers analyzed reports made to VigiBase, which is run by the World Health Organization.

Based on our results, close monitoring for these rare but serious inflammatory reactions after COVID-19 vaccination among adolescents until definitive causal relationship can be established,” the researchers wrote.

The study was published by the Journal of Korean Medical Science in its March edition.

Limitations include VigiBase receiving reports of problems, with some reports going unconfirmed.

Funding came from the South Korean government. One author reported receiving grants from pharmaceutical companies, including Pfizer.

Tyler Durden Fri, 03/15/2024 - 05:00

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‘Excess Mortality Skyrocketed’: Tucker Carlson and Dr. Pierre Kory Unpack ‘Criminal’ COVID Response

‘Excess Mortality Skyrocketed’: Tucker Carlson and Dr. Pierre Kory Unpack ‘Criminal’ COVID Response

As the global pandemic unfolded, government-funded…

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'Excess Mortality Skyrocketed': Tucker Carlson and Dr. Pierre Kory Unpack 'Criminal' COVID Response

As the global pandemic unfolded, government-funded experimental vaccines were hastily developed for a virus which primarily killed the old and fat (and those with other obvious comorbidities), and an aggressive, global campaign to coerce billions into injecting them ensued.

Then there were the lockdowns - with some countries (New Zealand, for example) building internment camps for those who tested positive for Covid-19, and others such as China welding entire apartment buildings shut to trap people inside.

It was an egregious and unnecessary response to a virus that, while highly virulent, was survivable by the vast majority of the general population.

Oh, and the vaccines, which governments are still pushing, didn't work as advertised to the point where health officials changed the definition of "vaccine" multiple times.

Tucker Carlson recently sat down with Dr. Pierre Kory, a critical care specialist and vocal critic of vaccines. The two had a wide-ranging discussion, which included vaccine safety and efficacy, excess mortality, demographic impacts of the virus, big pharma, and the professional price Kory has paid for speaking out.

Keep reading below, or if you have roughly 50 minutes, watch it in its entirety for free on X:

"Do we have any real sense of what the cost, the physical cost to the country and world has been of those vaccines?" Carlson asked, kicking off the interview.

"I do think we have some understanding of the cost. I mean, I think, you know, you're aware of the work of of Ed Dowd, who's put together a team and looked, analytically at a lot of the epidemiologic data," Kory replied. "I mean, time with that vaccination rollout is when all of the numbers started going sideways, the excess mortality started to skyrocket."

When asked "what kind of death toll are we looking at?", Kory responded "...in 2023 alone, in the first nine months, we had what's called an excess mortality of 158,000 Americans," adding "But this is in 2023. I mean, we've  had Omicron now for two years, which is a mild variant. Not that many go to the hospital."

'Safe and Effective'

Tucker also asked Kory why the people who claimed the vaccine were "safe and effective" aren't being held criminally liable for abetting the "killing of all these Americans," to which Kory replied: "It’s my kind of belief, looking back, that [safe and effective] was a predetermined conclusion. There was no data to support that, but it was agreed upon that it would be presented as safe and effective."

Carlson and Kory then discussed the different segments of the population that experienced vaccine side effects, with Kory noting an "explosion in dying in the youngest and healthiest sectors of society," adding "And why did the employed fare far worse than those that weren't? And this particularly white collar, white collar, more than gray collar, more than blue collar."

Kory also said that Big Pharma is 'terrified' of Vitamin D because it "threatens the disease model." As journalist The Vigilant Fox notes on X, "Vitamin D showed about a 60% effectiveness against the incidence of COVID-19 in randomized control trials," and "showed about 40-50% effectiveness in reducing the incidence of COVID-19 in observational studies."

Professional costs

Kory - while risking professional suicide by speaking out, has undoubtedly helped save countless lives by advocating for alternate treatments such as Ivermectin.

Kory shared his own experiences of job loss and censorship, highlighting the challenges of advocating for a more nuanced understanding of vaccine safety in an environment often resistant to dissenting voices.

"I wrote a book called The War on Ivermectin and the the genesis of that book," he said, adding "Not only is my expertise on Ivermectin and my vast clinical experience, but and I tell the story before, but I got an email, during this journey from a guy named William B Grant, who's a professor out in California, and he wrote to me this email just one day, my life was going totally sideways because our protocols focused on Ivermectin. I was using a lot in my practice, as were tens of thousands of doctors around the world, to really good benefits. And I was getting attacked, hit jobs in the media, and he wrote me this email on and he said, Dear Dr. Kory, what they're doing to Ivermectin, they've been doing to vitamin D for decades..."

"And it's got five tactics. And these are the five tactics that all industries employ when science emerges, that's inconvenient to their interests. And so I'm just going to give you an example. Ivermectin science was extremely inconvenient to the interests of the pharmaceutical industrial complex. I mean, it threatened the vaccine campaign. It threatened vaccine hesitancy, which was public enemy number one. We know that, that everything, all the propaganda censorship was literally going after something called vaccine hesitancy."

Money makes the world go 'round

Carlson then hit on perhaps the most devious aspect of the relationship between drug companies and the medical establishment, and how special interests completely taint science to the point where public distrust of institutions has spiked in recent years.

"I think all of it starts at the level the medical journals," said Kory. "Because once you have something established in the medical journals as a, let's say, a proven fact or a generally accepted consensus, consensus comes out of the journals."

"I have dozens of rejection letters from investigators around the world who did good trials on ivermectin, tried to publish it. No thank you, no thank you, no thank you. And then the ones that do get in all purportedly prove that ivermectin didn't work," Kory continued.

"So and then when you look at the ones that actually got in and this is where like probably my biggest estrangement and why I don't recognize science and don't trust it anymore, is the trials that flew to publication in the top journals in the world were so brazenly manipulated and corrupted in the design and conduct in, many of us wrote about it. But they flew to publication, and then every time they were published, you saw these huge PR campaigns in the media. New York Times, Boston Globe, L.A. times, ivermectin doesn't work. Latest high quality, rigorous study says. I'm sitting here in my office watching these lies just ripple throughout the media sphere based on fraudulent studies published in the top journals. And that's that's that has changed. Now that's why I say I'm estranged and I don't know what to trust anymore."

Vaccine Injuries

Carlson asked Kory about his clinical experience with vaccine injuries.

"So how this is how I divide, this is just kind of my perception of vaccine injury is that when I use the term vaccine injury, I'm usually referring to what I call a single organ problem, like pericarditis, myocarditis, stroke, something like that. An autoimmune disease," he replied.

"What I specialize in my practice, is I treat patients with what we call a long Covid long vaxx. It's the same disease, just different triggers, right? One is triggered by Covid, the other one is triggered by the spike protein from the vaccine. Much more common is long vax. The only real differences between the two conditions is that the vaccinated are, on average, sicker and more disabled than the long Covids, with some pretty prominent exceptions to that."

Watch the entire interview above, and you can support Tucker Carlson's endeavors by joining the Tucker Carlson Network here...

Tyler Durden Thu, 03/14/2024 - 16:20

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