Morning Platinum Market Report

January platinum has started the week off with a large gain, although prices remain well below their recent highs. Some traders feel that the platinum market may have difficultly fully recovering from Friday's intra-day plunge, which obliterated a large portion of last week's recovery bounce. Equity markets on both sides of the Atlantic are expected to go a long way towards helping platinum hold onto recent gains, as improved macroeconomic sentiment will likely be a requirement for prices to make any sort of longer-term rebound from these levels. The German Trade surplus during August was 13.8 billion Euros, higher than market expectations and may reflect stronger industrial platinum demand from German automakers.