Diverging Investment Convictions Emerge Across Platinum and Palladium

Precious Metals Weekly · Issue 662 · 25 June 2026

Metals Focus examines how platinum and palladium — which have tracked a broadly similar price path since their record highs in late January, correcting 36% and 38% respectively by mid-June — are now drawing increasingly divergent investor convictions. In CME futures, investors have trimmed platinum exposure while keeping a constructive, net-long stance throughout the correction; by contrast they have turned progressively more bearish on palladium, rebuilding gross shorts since March until net shorts topped 400koz in early June, the most since last October. The setup predates the January 2026 peak: tariff uncertainty and Section 232 critical-minerals investigations after President Trump's return drove onshoring of both metals into CME-approved US vaults, lifting platinum inventories 142% and palladium 445% (to 210koz) across 2025 to historical highs, before the post-Iran-conflict shift in rate expectations triggered a sharp PGM correction. The recent negatives, however, fall more heavily on palladium's core fundamentals: the EPA's proposed two-year delay to Tier 4 vehicle emissions standards weighs on autocatalyst loadings (with palladium more exposed via gasoline demand), a USITC ruling that Russian palladium imports do not materially injure US industry removed a potential upside risk, and higher PGM basket prices have spurred North American recycling and spent-autocatalyst processing — lifting palladium-rich secondary supply and softening the deficit outlook. With platinum's broader demand base insulating it, platinum investment has merely lost momentum while palladium has lost conviction, leaving the second-half question of whether this positioning gap is an early signal of a future price divergence. On the week, gold slipped below $4,000 for the first time since November as a firmer US dollar priced in a possible rate hike this year; the gold:silver ratio hit three-month highs above 68; in platinum, Acme committed $4.2bn to Oman green-hydrogen projects (71,000tpa hydrogen and 400,000tpa ammonia capacity); and EU vehicle sales rose 4% y/y in May to 955k units, with new-energy vehicles up 17% as internal-combustion sales fell 20%.