Cat Prices on the way down? Seems Platinum down to lowest price in last 5 years

Yeesh...just as I was about to start buying cats. May have to hold off on that for a while.

Wondered why I haven't been getting much for cats lately, guess it's time to stockpile and wait.

Precious metals are indeed down and driving both Cat and Escrap prices down. My buyer advised a few weeks ago to hold off on selling for now.

I don't normally stockpile things...turn them in as container or area becomes full.

Matty...When prices are low, it may be a good time to buy if your willing to roll the dice that prices will come back up someday.

Originally Posted by KzScrapper

Precious metals are indeed down and driving both Cat and Escrap prices down. My buyer advised a few weeks ago to hold off on selling for now.

I don't normally stockpile things...turn them in as container or area becomes full.

Matty...When prices are low, it may be a good time to buy if your willing to roll the dice that prices will come back up someday.

Oh I’m down with that. Buying low and selling high is pretty much how I try to do things.

But storage is the issue for me. I can’t hang onto a ton of cats and wait for the market to bounce back. It will, I don’t really doubt it, it’s just a matter of when. The second issue for me is that I would need a quick turnaround since we’re still in the building stage and throwing a lot of our own money into things. Can’t really sit on stuff for that long, ya know?

Originally Posted by Mechanic688

Ouch! That is one telling chart!
Thank you John for bringing up this issue. It is relevant to all who buy vehicles to scrap.

I always find it amazing how the news is able to manipulate prices by fear. When I traded I remember listening to a guy who told a story about how an explosion in the UK had made the US Stock market plunge. He said "All traders did was utilize that news to short the market.. the idea that an explosion in the UK has anything to do with the US stock market is pure rubbish"

This applies with the ISIS and Ebola news as well. One has nothing to do with the other.. but fears and news perpetuating fear are pushing markets down- Great to be a "bear" right now if you are in just about any market!

Its all manipulation right now. Look at the amount of stocks being dumped off (check the volume sales on some of the top stocks as compared to their sales even 6 months ago).

A lot of the people dumping stocks are buying up precious metals, to make it worth their while, the prices are being driven down by a large group of international powerhouse investors. Why buy gold at $1300 when they can drive the price down to $1200 or maybe $1100... and as usual, the other metals are following suit.

Look at the last time metals dropped, not long after... the stock market took a big thump (because the people that were dumping stocks, stopped dumping them, and in return, stopped re-investing their cash into metals, and boom... a few months later, silver and gold skyrocketed because lack of movement made it seem like a shortage combined with the dollar nose-diving along with the stock market, the real estate market took a huge hit the other way because of bad loans, and all of a sudden, these guys were dumping gold and silver at 200-250% and buying up commercial foreclosures for pennies on the dollar. None of this stuff is new. It's all a part of the economic greed cycle. Hold your non-ferrous.

I just shipped a very small box of escrap off just to use a buyer for the first time and see how it goes, but my stockpile is growing. I am still buying silver and hoarding copper pennies and silver dimes/quarters. I have been stripping more wire than I usually do and just stashing it in boxes. Even my yard asked me why I was only bringing in shred and steel lately. Well... it's because I see the writing on the walls, there's been a pen on it for months now. And a side note... this ISIS stuff, doesn't have much to do with it. It was going to happen anyway. It just gives the media something to blame and convince ignorant people that there is a cause to the financial issues other than poor government. Washington creating a smoke screen again... who would have ever guessed?

Yes, the market has NOT been kind to us in the last month. I haven't had to drop my prices too severely yet, but converters are down a bit and headed lower if the market drops much more. A few bucks a cat isn't a real big deal if you have 10 or 20 that you cut from junkers. It's downright scary if you're sitting on a few hundred converters that you bought at higher price levels, especially when you're only working on 6 to 10%.

I still don't trust that the PGM markets are done falling (but I'd be happy to be wrong). Platinum is down another $21.00/oz as I type this, Palladium down $12. Pd held up better than Pt there for a while, but it, too has been hammered in the last few weeks. Many common high-grade converters today are actually palladium-based..GM Flows and high-grade Hyundais to name a few.

I'm filling my batches, locking in my pricing and unloading quickly, no time to wait around with $40+ daily drops in Platinum! This kind of thing usually occurs once or twice in a decade. It's scary, we just have to know that it eventually will happen and be ready to deal with it. If it gets really bad and I break even (or even lose a few hundred) on a batch, I look at it this way- I made money on my last 50 batches, and I will almost certainly make a profit on each of the next 50. If I should lose a bit on a batch or two, it's a small price to pay for all the times I have made and will make money. In a way, it's a good thing... Market scares like this will quickly shake out the weak players.

If you can wait, that's a good idea. The market WILL come back.

I sold a pile of silver at $38/oz in 2011 when I bought my new truck. Now, I'm buying it all back and then some below $17. We'll see $38 silver again, just like we'll see $1500+ Platinum.

If not for the capital I have tied up, I guarantee I would be hoarding at least my high-grade converters and sitting on them for a year or two if I had to. If it gets much lower, I may just start throwing back one here, one there and just "forgetting" about them. Most of 'em gotta go, though. If I don't sell, I don't buy.