Gold more "valuable" than platinum!

I am sure there are those that have noticed this, however was checking the prices today, and noticed for the first time that the price of Gold, even at the current "weaker" prices is now MORE VALUABLE than Platinum.

One could surmise that with the attention on gold and silver maybe the market move it attention to shorting Pt. If this is the case, possible diversification opportunity for us metal bugs?

Kitco

how long do you think gold will stay past platinum? or is this just a short term ballooning of the gold price that will recede in the near future? either way i wish i got in to gold back when it was around 3 and 4 hundred an oz

reply to post by JakiusFogg


And Rhino horn is almost twice as expensive as gold. For keratin! I do not understand how they work out the values on these things to be honest......

reply to post by NISMOALTI


I am not convinced that it is due to an "inflation" of the gold price. It is still far off the last all time high, and massively depressed due to market manipulations. I think this is just a REALLY good platinum buying opportunity. According to the charts it hit a lot, when all the prices fell last year, But Pt stayed low as gold is more susceptible to price rises due to higher market and out of marketing buy sell forces.

reply to post by Flavian


Speculation my friend. its all to do with how much someone agrees to pay for a paper contract for "delivery" at a future point in time. however this gets traded off quickly so the "gold" if it ever really existed never get delivered. Physically.

This is why we are seeing two prices emerging for gold, one "market": (the spot) and another for physical.

reply to post by JakiusFogg


Thanks for that, certainly helps. However, what i was really getting at was what makes gold so expensive? It has no intrinsic value - whereas at least Platinum can be used in a variety of industrial applications, etc.

Is it simply the old human "shiny shiny" thing again? If so, that is something we really need to sort about ourselves!

Gold is rarer than platinum.
en.wikipedia.org...

Far more importantly is that platinum has many economic uses, over 80% of all platinum is used as a productive economic asset, which means that hoarding platinum as a store of value over time withholds it's value from the economy and holds back the economy. The economic users of platinum will oppose hoarding and use laws or develop other technologies to fight your hoarding.

Gold has very little economic or industrial use, by hoarding gold as a store of value over time it's value increases to everyone that uses it as a store of value over time, this is called the Network Effect. Gold is much more evenly distributed over the planet making it's store of value function available to more people unlike platinum which is mined mainly in South Africa 80% and Russia 11%.

The total stock of available gold is much higher than platinum, new gold mining has a very small effect on it's total stock making it a known, stable store of value compared to platinum with a very small available stock with demand and supply from mining making it's value volatile and not a good store of value.

Simply put, gold has ultimate salience as a store of value, true wealth must be stable over time. Currently vehicles use most of the mined platinum, but in twenty years use of platinum is anyone's guess to it's value.

Gold has already been chosen as the most valuable item of wealth, and has been for thousands of years, central banks are about to recapitalize the global currency debt system and they are not going to be getting any platinum.

reply to post by inthewinterdark


That is a fantastically in depth answer thank you but to be honest it still doesn't answer my query - maybe my question is flawed? I am really confused though as to why gold is worth anything. You can't do anything with it, only old gold jewellery (generally) looks good so what is its worth? How is so valuable?

You could understand it for say something like Helium, etc, but why gold?

I genuinely just do not understand it - im not trying to be difficult but will certainly concede the possibility i am thick!

I get what you're asking. One theory I heard was the the "Alien ancestor" masters valued gold as a 'source of something or other, and so put man to work digging it up for them. And so after they left, it was ingrained in the human mind that gold was valuable and that having lots of it was a good thing.

One other more sane reason may be that again in ancient times, BC BCE whatever running through AD. Gold, becuase it was hard to find, and difficult to get, and so was only used (as decoration) by people of stature. The more gold someone had the more powerful they were. And so it became a universal maxim. gold = power and wealth.

it is true to say that on its own it is a simple metal with little functional use that we know of. However it is considered to be valuable. it always has, and really in truth it always will. As for why people think it is valuable. Take you pick. But yes its the shiny shiny thing, and I still smell like horse crap, but have shiney things in my beard so I am more powerful than you sort of thing!

reply to post by Flavian


Thinking about your query as to what makes gold's value several thoughts come up. To most of the world's population, food, shelter and safety are primary concerns and gold is something that can immediately get more of those necessities if you happen to have any. To the rest of the people, who produce or work and can get more food, shelter and things than they need right now they need to store that extra product for later in life. Gold sits at an apex of this 'store of value through time' aspect, the important part is 'through time'. Helium is a good example of being opposite to this basic aspect, very hard to store through time.

www.slate.com...
www.npr.org...

In western civilization there are a lot of people who produce more than they need and wish to store for later, retirement funds are the primary store of value for them. As they store their extra productivity in retirement funds, they store their extra wealth in the debts of others, hoping to be paid back later in time. Now we see a global debt crisis where many of these debts are not going to be paid back, as this process of debt deflation continues notice that the bail-outs are happening, instead of people working and paying back future debts, new currency is printed and used to keep your retirement funds at current nominal levels. Instead of people working in the future to provide for your retirement, you are going to get currency instead. If everyone starts getting currency instead of getting the benefits of someones productive work then what do we have to divide amongst ourselves, less actual goods and services and more currency.

Coming back to gold, there are always going to be people that need to save their extra work into the future unless civilization collapses and food becomes ultimate wealth, these people are going to store their extra value somewhere through time. Hoarding goods of value to the economy has a detrimental effect, gold does not experience detriment to hoarding and indeed benefits from people using it to store value, it's almost a circular argument except it's not quite. This not quite bit is the clue to gold's real world value.

Currently, countries settle their balance of trade with each other using each others debts. When these trade imbalances are finally referenced into something in the physical world the debt crisis will be resolved. The only physical item left to balance all the goods and services in trade is physical gold. The USA can settle her trade debts today, using half her gold at a purchasing power of $100,000 per ounce ($16Tdebt/4000tons). It's not the dollar value that is important to the re-balancing, it is the fact that it is half the gold, a sizable quantity, an unambiguous quantity, a real world quantity. Gold's value will increase in value compared to it's current basic economic value as it increases in it's functional state of a 'store of value over time'

From Pragmatic Capitalism: Understanding The Modern Monetary System
"As a current account deficit nation, the US government can appropriately be thought of as a net currency exporter. This means that we send pieces of paper over to foreign nations in exchange for goods and services"
pragcap.com...

Platinum does not have the universal acceptance as money for the several millenia as does gold. Platinum is scarce, yes, and can spike up if Russia or SA wants to embargo their exports of platinum, but gold (and silver) are rightfully the only true monetary metals.