Platinum and iron ore essentially correlated over the last five years! I would never have suspected that, but importantly what is it telling us?

I think it helps us understand that the global economy is soft. Chinese infrastructure spending has slowed and demand for platinum, and as such diesel-powered cars, is soft.

But there is an additional and perhaps more important angle, supply vs. demand. We know that global iron ore supply has rocketed (heck even Anglo have finally started delivering iron ore from their Minas-Rio mine) coupled with reduced demand has seen prices under serious pressure and we’re seeing the same in the platinum space. The platinum story has long been about the white metals moving into under supply. But the evidence says not at all, we know platinum miners were buyers of platinum in the years leading up the five-month strike of earlier this year creating artificial demand and hence throwing out the under supply story.

So short version: commodities generally and platinum and iron ore in particular, are in over supply hence weak and likely to remain so for some years as the supply gets flushed out and demand picks up.