Metals & Alloys

Hi,

precious metal prices rise and fall depending on market cycles and demand by

industry, speculative demand, jewelry and as a reserve for bad times to come or alike.

So we have a split market since precious metals are marketed.

Silver is now high again in price despite falling industrial demand: the use for photography has declined sharply. But silver was much higher in very early times, up to 25% of the gold price !

Platinum and the platinum group metals are in high demand because catalysts for cars and chemistry so platinum will rise higher if (big if) the car sales and chemical production is constant or rising further.

Gold is once more on a historical high price but the $ of today is much less in value if compared to the $ of 1980 when for the first time 1000$/ounce was reached.

So I think that 50 to 70 % of this market is not influenced by jewelry.

I think further that buyers of real jewelry prefer real precious metals and no fake that looks similar.

Mass consumers are different so anything that mimics gold plating and other precious metal plating will have a market if cheap. (Vacuum coating can do this with nitrides but vacuum is expensive.)

So I would not divert research capacity to the jewelry sector but stay or fortify the hightech sector: there are the applications that can pay very high prices to get initial reflux of funding and then establish cheaper procedures.

RHABE