Palladium Investment

Palladium is a platinum group metal with the lowest density and melting point out of the group. Platinum group metals such as Palladium are important, and attractive to invest in, because 1 in 4 of all goods manufactured today either have Platinum group metals in it or they were used in the manufacturing process.

Palladium is present in catalytic converters, ceramic capacitors, and it is used to manufacture many various pieces of surgical equipment. As we progress technologically, the uses for Palladium seems to grow, while the supply decreases. This is what makes investing in Palladium as desirable as it is.

Investing in Palladium, like any other Precious Metal, carries its risks, and while I believe it has a bright future ahead of it, I cannot guarantee that it will perform like you may want it to or think it should. Precious metal's, historically, can be very volatile and day trading it wouldn't be advisable unless your highly educated and skilled in your trade.

The average person would be better off buying and holding the metal as a long term investment, but that is obviously after doing plenty of research and being comfortable with the investment. Again, I won't be held responsible for your investment, this is your decision to make and your results to bear. With that out of the way, you might be wondering how you can invest in Palladium.

The most common forms are in bar and coin form. You can purchase Palladium from many fine companies such as Apmex, and also from other major coin and metal brokers.

Beware that you will most likely pay a good amount above spot unless you buy a meaningful quantity. A good example is that, as of this writing, Palladium is trading for about $480.00 per ounce, and you'd be hard pressed to find 1 ounce for less than $518.00 shipped.

Don't be disappointed by the prices that you find. Just remember that spot price is more applicable to large quantity orders, and feel good if you can get in the ballpark of spot. If you have an OK amount of capital available to invest with then you can order in larger quantities which should provide a much lower cost per ounce. Remember: shipping is a killer.

Palladium Mining Stocks/ETFs

Another popular way to invest in precious metals, including Palladium, is to invest in the companies that pull it out of the ground. There is added risk here as you are also buying into the quality of the company's management. While you will see many similarities in the price fluctuations of Palladium and the price fluctuations in a Palladium miner, they are not guaranteed to track each other exclusively because Miners have earnings announcements and Palladium doesn't.

Additionally, there is an ETF (exchange traded fund) called PALL that tries to track the price of Palladium. This is also known as "Paper Palladium." The idea behind "Paper Palladium" is that it is more liquid than physical Palladium, but the downside is that you don't hold it physically. That is a trade-off that you, as an investor, needs to decide if you're comfortable with or not.

Those are the main investment options available to you. There may be a few other more convoluted methods, but I consider these the most straight-forward ways to get your portfolio exposed to Palladium.