Why did you like buying them, what was it that attracted you to them? Seriously... I remember doing a marketing research on how/why Singaporeans bought all these toys up, focusing on the toys, rather than the meals themselves. The events happened decades ago, but probably these toys are still being sold today? McDonald's the campaign in multiple Asian countries, including Singapore, Taiwan, Japan...
Interesting article here on rhodium https://www.spglobal.com/platts/en/...m-price-not-enough-to-increase-output-heraeus Abridged below: The article describes a view that operators of mothballed projects may be reluctant to chase a high rhodium price due to the long investment life cycle of the mine (10+ years) and volatility of the rhodium price Anglo American Platinum's Nov. 05 announcement to close its troubled Anglo Convertor Plant Unit B at its Waterval smelter complex for a full rebuild, which has been plagued by water leaks. As a result, Amplats -- one of the world's largest platinum and platinum group metals producers -- has lowered its refined production guidance for 2020 to 2.5 million PGM ounces, from the previous COVID-19 impacted guidance of 3.1-3.3 million oz. "Platinum would contribute the most ounces in any restart and an increase in platinum production in an already very oversupplied market could depress the price even further, hurting overall returns," Heraeus said. In 2019, rhodium was the least diversified geographically metal with over 80% of supply coming from South Africa. Nearly 80% of the annual demand for rhodium comes from the global automotive industry, which uses the metal in catalytic converters to control emissions of greenhouse gases and pollutants. Growing rhodium deficit In a Bank of America virtual conference on Nov. 10, BASF Precious & Base Metal Services Senior Vice President Matthias Dohrn said the rhodium market remained tight due to the recovery in automotive output in China and decrease in production in South Africa as a result of COVID-19 shutdowns earlier in the year. BASF said it expects "severe shortages of rhodium projected in the future", with the rhodium global deficit at around 47,000 oz in 2020, rising to 162,000 oz in 2021, 335,000 oz in 2022, and 411,000 oz in 2024. “It's important to note that there is no such thing as quick ounces." "Quick ounces is probably at best, when talking about rhodium ounces, 12 months away, when talking about meaningful increase in rhodium output. So I think that's the misnomer, when people think 'We can just open up mothballed mines and we are going to get a big supply of rhodium,' that's not the case," Van Graan said.. Heraeus said gasoline light-vehicle sales are likely to recover and with tightening emissions legislation could lead the rhodium market to experience widening deficits, and in turn keep prices elevated.
There were a few posts earlier about the investor market in rhodium. I think there is an ETF In the USA (which might deal with .99 sponge, who knows) but at retail level Baird has not listed any for sale for quite a while from what I’ve seen. From what I gather there is no futures market to influence price action. Above it says 80% of demand is automotive, largely driven by government decree regarding fuel and atmospheric gas While all bets would be off in a war, should peacetime conditions prevail then the price ought to gain some traction from here in 2021 should the deficit projected above be valid, ie 3 fold the deficit of 2020, double that again in 2022 and perhaps maturing in 2023-2024
It was all over the news so I thought it would be an interesting (and cheap) gift but turned out that my wife wasn't interested, she said she preferred a diamond ring. The actual queue wasn't that long as the toy was available for the entire week. Hello kitty is very popular among the gen-x, along with transformers. Today, the gen z are into stuff like Line friends.
