Platinum's Quiet Rally

Platinum is staging a steady and impressive rally off its December 2008 lows.  After dropping below 800, July Platinum futures hit as high as 1220 today, eventually settling at 1195 for the day.

Platinum is mostly used in industry, but is also considered "hard money", and maybe the 3rd most obvious hard money alternative to fiat currencies - behind gold and silver.  Platinum should do quite well as this newly printed money makes its way into circulation.

Tom Dyson from GrowthStock Wire also likes Platinum a lot, saying "you're nuts if you ignore platinum."

Reuters-Jefferies CRB index hits all-time high

As stocks continue to flounder, commodities continue to soar across the board. Platinum has set 7 record highs in the last 8 trading days. All wheat contracts also set all-time highs.

No doubt this is a flat out bull market. But all bull markets have set backs, so we need to keep that in mind.

What are the best ways to trade this market:

• If you're a momentum/technical trader, you may be loving the action right now in the strongest performers. At the risk of sounding like your mother - have fun, but be careful! The volatility is really nuts right now, and that means prices can go down as well as up.
• If you're a longer term, fundamental trader (as I am) - take a look at the stuff that is still low, but starting to move up. I look at sugar, coffee, and cotton as great bargains right now.

We all know the long trend of these markets is up, but it's also imporant to manage risk and not get burned (too badly) if the markets swing back. There are a lot of long speculative positions in these markets right now, and a fast liquidation of these positions would send everything tumbling. We saw a dress rehearsal of this a few weeks ago when the global markets tanked.

Jim Rogers: Avoid Platinum

Look at cotton, coffee, and sugar, he says.

This is interesting because I was really kicking myself for prematurely selling my platinum position after it took off last week due to the S Africa drama.