What news and data are you looking for next week?

I heard a little bit about their new car they are making to try to appeal to the middle range sedan buyers. It's the one with the gull-wing style doors right?

What I read was that this new release aimed to put the company back into the limelight once again because they had been suffering with poor sales previously.

 

I couldn't agree with you more. You first have to lay the ground work before you fully understand what you're working with and there after you're almost on auto-pilot only looking out for the key movements and keywords. Every once in a while it's always good to do a full analysis again on the industry or company, just to check whether your base assumptions and/or findings on the company or industry are still true. Otherwise you could find yourself using the incorrect strategy sometime in the future.

I'm just thinking of the fact that the price of gold is still higher than the price of platinum (I honestly thought this would been temporary). So many basic assumptions that I've had about the precious metals have had to be reconsidered.

 

I have to agree, knowledge is power, and the more you know about a specific situation the more likely you are to make an informed decision. It is one of the ways you can take advantage of what is out there. Get the best information and use it to your advantage. this is the way you can make certain you have the important information you need and can utilize for your benefit. Stocks are no exception to this rule.

 

If we are talking at that middle-to-high-end prices of cars, I don't think people will be much interested, without clear communication about how much money they save. However, more lower-to-middle class people can be interested in the investment if better explained. The Environmental Protection Agency said that in 2013, $2,500 of gasoline or motor oil every year is spent by households, or ~$208/mo. That's pretty much. It means that, even with the car's consumption of electricity (I don't know how much kWh a Tesla car uses), if you take out these $2,500 each year, if you keep a car for 4 years, you can buy a +$10,000 car if you stop using oil.

About platinum, well, I think the gold "safe heaven" plays here, meanwhile platinum is more an industry-backed precious metal than it feels jewelry-backed or backed by the confidence of investors. For me, it is what it explains the gold getting so higher compared to platinum.

 

I agree that that was definitely the main reason for the gold price rising faster than the price of platinum, but for someone who is new to investing or for someone who's only been watching the markets for 15 years or so, this would be a huge surprise or at the very least an unexpected surprise. Other than a couple of days in 2008, the last time the price of gold was higher than the price of platinum was way back in 1991. Now I don't want to reveal my age or anything, but let's just say I had no idea what platinum was in 1991 . So for someone like me who hasn't experienced a period like this before, the change in this relationship is not something I would have even considered in my modelling and expectations. But when you look at the state of the market, i.e. the flight to safety you mentioned and you consider the fact platinum is more industrial in it's use than gold, it all does make sense.

 

I've been keeping a little look at the car markets today and to my complete surprise, Volkswagen shares have risen a little today. Peugeot shares have also risen a little over the course of the day.

I'll be sure to keep a watch on both of them tomorrow.