John Read Quotations

We recognize that prices are above what is justifiable on the basis of supply and demand fundamentals.

The risk remains that the rand will be at the higher end of people's forecasts.

We believe that all precious metals are trading above fundamentally justified fair value, but the weight of investor, speculator and commodity-index buying has demonstrated that this does not stop metals trading ever-higher.

Of course, gold can go higher on investment and speculative demand, but there seems no clear motivation for new money to be committed to gold at this time.

It is an evolving situation and we will do whatever the ECB (England and Wales Cricket Board) tells us.

Base and precious metals are considerably above what we consider to be fair value - based on fundamental supply and demand factors - but events of the past two years have demonstrated that investment and speculative flows are very capable of lifting prices well beyond fundamental fair value.

We need to find the level at which underlying physical demand will support gold. Until then, I wouldn't be comfortable with gold up here, because it's all investment and speculative money at the moment.

After the rapid rally in gold over the past few months a correction is almost inevitable at some point and this could be it.

It seems extremely unlikely that gold doesn't trade $600 an ounce in the spot market at some time either today or this week.

We believe that new-year allocations towards commodities will keep platinum and palladium firm in the near term and see platinum at $1,100/oz and palladium at $300/oz over one month, although we suspect that profit taking will set in at some stage and see both metals lower to $1,050/oz and $270/oz in three months.