Whilst OANDA’s US division has aligned itself with many North American FX brokerages and taken steps to discontinue issuance of precious metal trading as a leveraged spot transaction, Australian retail Forex broker Pepperstone has added XPD/USD (Palladium) and XPT/USD (Platinum) to its list of trading instruments on the ubiquitous Metatrader 4 platform. The official announcement of the addition was made on August 29, 2014. Currently trading with the sister metals is possible only on the desktop version of MetaTrader 4 with the broker, but the company promises to make the new pairs available on cTrader soon.
The introduction comes as the prices of the platinum group metals (PGMs) are extremely volatile, in contrast to FX which has suffered what FXCM CEO Drew Niv this year considered to be the lowest period of volatility in two decades. The volatility reflects the various factors that determine the price of PGMs. Given that they are used in the automobile industry to cut emissions, their prices are determined by the fortunes of the car manufacturing sector. The more cars that are manufactured and sold, the higher the demand for platinum and palladium. Maladies within car manufacturers in Europe and China have sent PGM prices down in July this year. At the same time, fears of reduced supply of palladium from one of its biggest producers, Russia, has sent the price of palladium up over the past week. In fact, on August 29th palladium price reached its highest level in more than 13 years.
Pepperstone is now giving traders the chance to explore this complex and mind-challenging trading of PGMs, characterized by high volatility.
The broker is joining a growing group of Forex brokers that already offer trading with Platinum and Palladium in the Antipodean nation, including OANDA Australia, which offers these instruments on fxTrade, and ThinkForex, which offers them on MetaTrader 4.
The addition of Palladium and Platinum to Pepperstone’s list of trading instruments brings momentum to the broker’s drive to enrich its lineup of products. Less than a week ago the broker announced it would add two crude oil pairs – XBR/USD and XTI/USD to its MetaTrader 4. This followed the introduction of ZAR/JPY in August, as well as the USD/RUB and USD/THB pairs in July.