Iridium Price Performance Calendar

Connected blocks of the same color reveal the prevailing market phase. An uninterrupted series of green cells over several weeks indicates an uptrend — the price rose day after day, or at least on most trading days. Conversely, a red block signals a correction phase. Particularly revealing are the transitions: where does green abruptly switch to red? This often marks a local high.

When green, red, and gray cells alternate without a clear direction emerging, the market is in a sideways phase (consolidation). During such periods, the price moves within a narrow range. For long-term investors, these phases are neutral; for traders, they offer little momentum.

Individual, intensely colored cells amid an otherwise calm phase point to external shock events. Examples from recent history: the Lehman collapse in September 2008, the COVID panic in March 2020, or geopolitical escalations. Such days can be immediately identified in the heatmap and cross-referenced with historical events.

Use the year selector to analyze different calendars side by side. For example, compare 2020 (the COVID year) with 2019 (a calm environment): the density and intensity of green and red cells differs fundamentally. Such comparisons sharpen your understanding of how strongly crises and market phases influence daily price development.

Because no exchange forms prices continuously, a quotation often stays the same for several days. Grey cells then appear in series in the calendar. That does not mean nobody traded — it means the dealer saw no reason to change the quotation. With gold such a run would be conspicuous; here it is normal.

By far the greater part of these metals goes into exhaust catalytic converters. There is no jewellery demand to cushion a decline, and no central bank that buys. Tightened emissions standards or weak vehicle production therefore come through almost undamped — a dependence on a single industry that no other metal has.

These metals occur as a by-product of platinum and nickel mining, almost exclusively in South Africa and Russia. Nobody mines them deliberately, so supply follows platinum output. Power cuts or strikes in South Africa therefore act immediately, and on all three at once — a pattern that becomes visible when several calendars are compared.

The market is small, and a few transactions suffice to shift a quotation. A quiet week is therefore often followed by a single day of several percent. Between 2019 and 2021 rhodium rose from around 2,500 to over 20,000 dollars per ounce and fell back just as quickly afterwards — in a liquid market that would hardly be possible.

If the quotation stays the same, the cell appears grey. Whether the market really stood still or whether the dealer simply had no reason to change anything cannot be told from the outside. A long grey stretch is therefore not evidence of a stable price, but of an unchanged quotation.

If a quotation goes unadjusted for several days and is then brought up in one step, the movement of several days appears on a single one. The calendar then shows one strong cell where an exchange market would have shown three pale ones. For the comparison with gold or platinum this means: individual daily swings cannot be read as equivalent here.

It reliably shows when a metal was in motion and when it was not. A year with many coloured cells was a year with news — new emissions standards, output failures, a slump in vehicle production. A year of mostly grey cells was a year without such triggers. For the question of direction the price line is better suited; for the question of how restless it was, this grid.