But speculators can be fickle and this potentially creates more risk to the near term outlook than benefits, particularly if weaker general macro information creates a broader risk off environment.
Most of the recent palladium specific information has been bullish, with US auto sales at 15.2mln SAAR in March very strong. We should get Chinese data in the next few days, with sales very strong in the first 2 months of the year at 20%YoY+
The demand side of the equation for platinum has been perceived to be bad, with very bad European auto sales data and bad leading indicator data for the region suggesting its too soon to declare even a stabilisation in the downturn in demand in the EU.
This has weighed on prices and has seen a bit of a return of short interest from speculative futures. But the net length is still very high from a historical perspective.
One of the brighter points is that the drop in the price of platinum in the last few days has bought a huge increase in turnover on the Shanghai Gold Exchange, which is effectively a purchase of metal (not resold on the exchange). Purchases on the 3rd of April is on par with the largest ever.
Short Euro positions have crept back into positioning on the back of poor data as much as the situation in Cyprus. The risk does seem to be that these will increase if we don't see some improvement in growth prospects, which would shatter the illusion that the ECB's threat of OMT will be enough to keep bond yields low.
Positioning in gold has been comparatively uninteresting, with speculative longs and shorts largely unchanged in the last month. Perhaps this is interesting in itself, in that recent price movements and commentary (which has been bearish) hasn't done much to change speculators positioning on the yellow metal.
