The value of every converter you ship rides on three metals: platinum, palladium, and rhodium. Their prices come directly from the global market, and they move every single day. So we asked a simple question: after thirty years of daily prices, what does the market actually do?
We ran a full statistical analysis on every trading day from August 1996 through August 2026, more than 7,700 prices for each metal. Two lessons came through loud and clear, and both of them matter for how you sell your converters.
Lesson 1: Prices climb the stairs and take the elevator down
Look at any long stretch of PGM prices and you’ll see the same shape repeat: a long, grinding climb, then a fall that’s over almost before it starts. Palladium is the clearest example. It spent 4.1 years climbing 496% to its early-2020 high. Then, in 19 days, it gave back 42%.
That’s not a palladium quirk. We measured every big swing of 30% or more in all three metals since 1996. The pattern held everywhere. A typical palladium climb lasts about ten months; the typical slide takes three. Rhodium climbs for about seven months and slides in under three. Platinum is the most even-tempered of the three, but even its single worst month erased 38% of its value.
Here’s the part that matters most. The climbs announce themselves: big up-days almost always come in the middle of a rally that’s already underway. The crashes don’t. When we looked at the days before the market’s biggest single-day drops in platinum and palladium, we found no warning at all. In early 2020, palladium’s worst days hit while the price was still setting records. Rhodium once lost 60% in 13 days.
Think of it like weather at the beach. You can watch a nice day build all morning. The storm just shows up.
Lesson 2: Nobody can tell you which way prices go next
If the slides come without warning, can anything predict them? We tested the signals people lean on most: the metal’s own recent trend, US auto sales, industrial production, and the strength of the US dollar. For each one, we measured how much of the next twelve months’ price move it could actually explain, across all thirty years.
The best of the bunch, the dollar, explained 13% of the following year’s move. Auto sales, the one everyone in our industry watches, explained 3%. And a metal’s own momentum, the feeling that “it’s been going up, so it’ll keep going up,” explained 6% at best, and for palladium, essentially zero.
That doesn’t mean these things don’t matter. A strong dollar really does weigh on PGM prices, and real autocatalyst demand really does move the market over time. But they tell you about conditions today, not direction tomorrow. If someone tells you they know where rhodium will be next summer, they’re guessing. Thirty years of data says so.
What this means for your converters
Holding inventory to time the peak is a bet, not a plan. You can’t see the peak coming, and the market doesn’t send a warning before it turns. When it does turn, it moves faster than most yards can react. The worst months in our data took 38% to 63% off a metal’s price.
Selling on a steady rhythm beats trying to outguess the market. Shipping regularly means you catch the market where it actually lives: some highs, some lows, and a fair average. It beats risking a pile of converters sitting on the wrong side of an elevator ride down. This is similar to the dollar cost averaging strategy in investing.
What you can control is what you get paid for. The market sets the price of the metals. Accurate sampling, honest weights, and a transparent settlement determine how much of that price reaches you. That’s the part of the equation that doesn’t swing.
At RAS Cats, we can’t predict the market. Nobody can, and now we’ve got thirty years of proof. What we can do is make sure that whatever the market is doing the day your material settles, you’re paid accurately, transparently, and fast. Questions about how market prices flow into your settlement? Talk to a RAS buyer and we’ll be happy to walk you through it.
