Platinum and Palladium Crashed 40% in 2026, and Almost Nobody Noticed
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6 min read
In January 2026, platinum touched an all-time high of $2,920.41 an ounce. By early August, it was trading around $1,753, a drop of about 40% in six months (Kitco, metalcharts.org, both retrieved 2026-08-09). Palladium told a similar story: a run toward $2,200 in late January, then a slide back under $1,400. Gold, over the same stretch, barely moved. If your radar only covers gold and silver, you missed one of the sharpest platinum and palladium investing round trips of the year.
Both metals spiked hard in January, then gave most of it back. Gold is included below for comparison, using the same source and the same day for all three prices.
| Metal | 31 Dec 2025 close | Peak, late Jan 2026 | 8 Aug 2026 | Change from peak |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Platinum | $2,033.23 (Fortune) | $2,920.41, 26 Jan (Kitco/metalcharts.org) | $1,753.00 (Kitco) | -40.0% |
| Palladium | $1,651.40 (Long Forecast) | ~$2,195.50, 26 Jan, futures (multiple outlets) | $1,397.00 (Kitco) | -36.4% |
| Gold | not applicable here | not applicable here | $4,343.30 (Kitco) | flat on the year |
Platinum's January spike was largely investment and speculative buying: with gold trading above $5,000 an ounce at the time, platinum near $2,500 looked cheap by comparison, and Chinese investors in particular piled in as a "catch-up" trade (Kitco News, SunCrypto, both retrieved 2026-08-09). It cooled fast. By early February, platinum was already back near $2,100.
Palladium's late-January run was smaller in context. Its all-time high is $3,425 an ounce, set in March 2022, during the chip-shortage era when automakers were paying up for every ounce of catalytic-converter metal they could get. The $2,195.50 futures peak in January 2026 did not come close to that old record (Investing News Network, retrieved 2026-08-09).
Gold and silver move mostly on safe-haven demand: interest rates, the dollar, geopolitical fear. Platinum and palladium are different. They are industrial metals first.
Roughly 80% to 90% of palladium demand comes from catalytic converters in gasoline-engine cars (Investing News Network, retrieved 2026-08-09). Platinum's demand is more mixed, spread across diesel-vehicle catalytic converters, jewellery, and industrial uses like hydrogen fuel cells and chemical catalysts, alongside investment demand. That industrial base is exactly why both metals can rally hard on a supply story and then fall just as hard once investor enthusiasm cools, even while gold sits still.
Platinum's 2026 story is not just speculation. The World Platinum Investment Council's Q1 2026 Platinum Quarterly, published 18 May 2026, forecasts a fourth consecutive annual platinum market deficit: supply falling short of demand by 297,000 ounces in 2026, on top of a 1.1 million ounce deficit in 2025 (World Platinum Investment Council, retrieved 2026-08-09). Four straight years of the world using more platinum than it mines and recycles is a real, checkable reason prices have stayed elevated even after the January spike unwound.
Palladium's supply picture has eased compared to a few years ago. The World Platinum Investment Council's own multi-year outlook now expects palladium market deficits to persist through 2027, before gradually shifting to surpluses starting in 2028, as recycling supply grows (World Platinum Investment Council, retrieved 2026-08-09). That is a less urgent deficit story than platinum's, which helps explain why palladium's January spike faded faster and further, down more than a third from its own recent peak by August.
This is the part most people miss, because it happened gradually. From 1975 to 2000, platinum traded at an average 35% premium to gold, meaning the platinum-gold ratio averaged around 1.35 (SD Bullion, Antique Sage, both retrieved 2026-08-09). Platinum's price fell below gold's for good in January 2015, and it has stayed below ever since (BullionVault, retrieved 2026-08-09).
$1,753.00 ÷ $4,343.30 ≈ 0.40
At today's prices, platinum trades at roughly 40% of gold's price, or put another way, gold now costs about 2.5 times as much as platinum, an ounce for ounce comparison that would have sounded absurd to a jeweller in the 1990s.
If you have priced gold in Indonesia, you already know how visible it is: Antam and Pegadaian post daily bar and buyback prices that show up in headlines and price-tracking apps. Platinum and palladium have no equivalent here. Indonesian gold retailers do not stock platinum bars, because domestic retail demand is too small to support it (Indodax Academy, retrieved 2026-08-09). For most Indonesian investors, the practical way to get exposure is through international, exchange-listed products such as the GraniteShares Platinum Trust (PLTM) or the abrdn Physical Platinum Shares ETF (PPLT), both of which hold physical platinum in vaults and track the spot price (Asia Commodity Marketplace, retrieved 2026-08-09), rather than a local storefront price the way gold works.
That absence from the local retail channel is a big part of why a 40% price swing in six months barely registered here: there was no local buyback counter posting the number every morning.
If you already hold gold, silver or other precious metals, NetWort's manual holdings let you track platinum and palladium alongside them so a swing like this one shows up in your own numbers instead of staying invisible. For the currency and rate backdrop that also moves precious-metals prices, check the macro dashboard. For how gold and silver's own 2026 swing compared, see the gold-silver ratio explained.