What Is the Most Valuable Metal on Earth?: A Guide for Investors
With inflation rising, is there anywhere safe to put your money?
Recently, the annual inflation rate hit 7.9%, a higher rate than any time since 1982. The stock market has been bouncing wildly up and down, bonds don’t have the same return on investment as they once did, and crypto is too much of an unknown to feel safe investing in.
Where is an investor to go?
Luckily, the old wisdom still stands: precious metals are a safe investment. In times of high inflation, metals act as a safe and valuable hedge against your money losing value.
Sure, the typical precious metals like silver provide a nice return on investment, but if you’re looking for the best bang for your buck, they’re not the metal to turn to.
When investors are looking for the most valuable metal to put their money into, there’s only one place to turn: Rhodium.
What is Rhodium?
Appearance-wise, rhodium appears to have a silver-white color with corrosion-resistant properties. First discovered in 1803 by chemist William Hyde Wollaston, the noble metal was found soon after the discovery of palladium.
Typically found in river sands in North and South America, Rhodium is extraordinarily rare, with only 30 tons produced per year. For reference, over 3,000 tons of gold is mined in a given year.
What Makes Rhodium the Most Valuable Metal?
Rhodium is the most valuable metal on earth largely due to its use in the automotive industry.
Catalytic converters, the piece of the exhaust system that reduces pollutants, use rhodium to trigger that reduction. Platinum and palladium are other metals used in the converter, but rhodium is the key catalyst for reduction.
To put it simply, people need cars, cars need catalytic converters, and catalytic converters need rhodium.
Why Should You Invest in Rhodium?
As emissions standards continue to get tighter and tighter around the world, the demand for rhodium for catalytic converters is expected to continue to rise. Major emerging economies like India and China are tightening their emission rules, and as such, rhodium will be needed in higher quantities. Less supply, higher demand, greater returns.
In the past few years, the price of rhodium has skyrocketed. After sitting at around $600/t oz for years, rhodium prices went to the moon in 2021, hitting an all-time high of $29,500/t oz in April of that year.
Prices for rhodium have come down since then, but they should continue to stay high for the foreseeable future. If rhodium isn’t what you’re looking for, Rare Metal Blog has a list of a number of gold coins that investors should look into.
Rhodium: The Most Valuable Metal
Extremely rare in nature, highly desired in the automotive industry, and likely to be required more in the future, rhodium is not only the most valuable metal on Earth but also one that investors should be investing in.
If you have any first-hand experience investing in rhodium, let us know. With inflation on the rise, rhodium is one of the best places you can put your money.