CATs Corner – Episode 9

Nick Snyder:
All right. Welcome everybody. Here with a special Thanksgiving episode of CATs Corner. How are you two doing today?

Scott Pollan:
[crosstalk 00:00:11] Doing good. I'm doing good.

Pete Thomas:
Man, people are doing their chicken little imitation. They're running around pointing at the sky. The sky's falling and it's just abject panic and all [inaudible 00:00:31] approved and everything's going to be peachy keen.

Nick Snyder:
So why is everyone panicking?

Pete Thomas:
Well, let's do the yin and the yang. First off, all of our friends that follow the CATs Corner want to know about platinum plating. So we'll cover copper because, of course, it's part of our entire picture. So, right now, this is important to everybody. China just lowered their rates. It was a shock to everyone. Nobody was looking for it. Central Bank said, "We're going to lower rates." And they're talking about doing an injection of funds into their system, which means copper could firm up right here, guys. So guys that have product, that are delivering product, there's a very good chance that we might see a firming of copper. Copper could be contra-cyclical to the break that's going on. So I want all of your viewers, Nick, to know what's going on.

Nick Snyder:
Okay. That's good information. And is that why we're seeing some dips in the PGMs too?

Pete Thomas:
Well, technically, the real issue that just occurred is that the EU just announced that they're going into another lockdown, which brought about probably the most dismal car sales in the European community in their history. And they're about to dive back into those deep waters again. So we're going to see lack of demand across the board for all products that you build cars with. I mean, aluminum, steel, everything, and it could be another bad month or two for our people coming into the holidays, which really sucks, you know?

Nick Snyder:
That is too bad. So are they going into lockdown due to the virus again?

Pete Thomas:
Yes. [crosstalk 00:02:23] Yeah, yeah. They had another wave of COVID and really heavy in Germany too. And they are very well inoculated. Caught a lot of people by surprise. And the other thing that we don't get a chance to talk to, because we are in the scrap side of things, but you have to look also at the technical side. It's important. We are a brokerage house as well as a physical dealer. And palladium has two magic numbers, 1,865 and 1,848 are the two real big numbers. Everybody watch those. If we take those out, it could be scary.

Pete Thomas:
Everybody said 2,000 couldn't be broken before, Nick. Well, it got broken and it got broken hard. Lot of people got whacked that weren't hedged. And now if we get into these numbers, it's going to be scary. And on the other side of that, our platinum friend, 939 is the old low. That's the old, longterm spike low that we had. And it has to hold those numbers in order to maintain any type of elevation in this current market. And I just wanted to throw that in because a lot of guys don't do charts. So now you're up to speed on what the technicians are looking at.

Nick Snyder:
So just so I understand it correctly, let me recap.

Pete Thomas:
You bet.

Nick Snyder:
So due to the shutdowns in the EU, they anticipate continued bad car sales. So they [crosstalk 00:04:02] production over there. Here in the US, what is everything looking like for all that, those numbers?

Pete Thomas:
Scott, I know you've been following the chips, so why don't you take that?

Scott Pollan:
As more chips are coming onto line and more cars are coming out, we are seeing shipments of vehicles to car lots, and the holiday season is traditionally an opportunity to buy vehicles. From my interpretation of the information that's available is that we are going to see cars come through, but these things have already been manufactured. So we'll have a surge of some auto sales relative to where we've been. And that could be tempered really quickly.

Scott Pollan:
We could see a nice little jump and then move right back down to where we've been as the people that have waiting to go out and get a truck, or to see what these new electrical vehicles look like... Now we're all kind of starting to realize that the electrical vehicle fad isn't quite coming through the way it was initially pitched. It still might take all of next year's manufacturing to get the rollout of these electric vehicles that has been proposed in our infrastructure bill.

Scott Pollan:
So petroleum vehicles will still be purchased through this next year. I don't know of... When I look around and talk to the people in my circle to say, "Hey, are you expanding your fleet, or are you doing maintenance on your existing vehicles?" The answer is overwhelmingly, "We're doing maintenance. We're not expanding our fleet. We're taking care of what we have. And if we have needs later, we'll go buy."

Scott Pollan:
But now it seems people have really... It's kind of like you've got your leather boots and if they tear on the side, do you go and get a new pair of red wing boots? Or do you put a little Shoe Goo on it? I think right now people are putting the goo on it to get through the winter, to see where we are next year. And that is not strong support for increased auto sales.

Pete Thomas:
A rather sticky story.

Nick Snyder:
Well, that's a bummer. We were hoping to see some of the numbers go the other way. [crosstalk 00:06:31] good run. But I mean, copper rebounded from last week with was nice because that got kind of... the low 420s-

Pete Thomas:
It was a real whip saw, very much a whip saw. And, as you know, really four or five months ago, we told all of your viewers be prepared for very, very violent markets. And we hit that one right out of the park.

Nick Snyder:
Yep, yep. You sure did. Well, let's keep everybody posted. We probably won't do another one until December, but we'll squeeze two in December.

Pete Thomas:
I'm running off to London to do the metals conference there. I'll be back the second week of December. I'll be real happy to sit down and tell everybody what's going on in the EU and in England. And I'll give you an overview there. I think that the idea as to what Scott just said, we're probably going to see a lot fewer light trucks and vehicles coming in to be crushed soon. There will be a little dip in that. So be prepared for that, in our opinion. And hopefully we'll see the EU very quickly come back online and relieve the pressure that's about to be created.

Nick Snyder:
Yeah, yeah. We'll have to wait and see. All right. Thank you, gentlemen.

Pete Thomas:
You bet.

Scott Pollan:
Thanks, Nick.

Nick Snyder:
Thanks.