Think of the calendar as a year of Ruthenium trading laid out on a grid: every weekday from Monday to Friday gets its own square, tinted by that day's result.
Squares tinted green ended the day in profit, those tinted red ended it lower. Stronger shading marks a bigger move.
Hovering over a square brings up the closing figure together with the change it represents. Earlier years are available from the drop-down.
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We put our whole heart into keeping preciousmetalprices.com fast, tidy and free — no paywalls, no clutter, just facts and live prices you can trust. If it’s any help to you, the nicest way to say thanks is to pass it along. Every share helps another investor find us and keeps the whole project ticking over. 💛
What does the performance calendar show?
The performance calendar visualizes the daily price change of a precious metal over an entire calendar year. Each individual cell in the heatmap represents exactly one trading day (Monday through Friday). Weekends and holidays when no trading takes place are omitted.
The color of each cell encodes both the direction and the magnitude of the daily change compared to the previous day:
- ◆ Green indicates a price increase — the darker the green, the larger the daily gain. Dark green cells mark days with gains exceeding 2%.
- ◆ Red indicates a price decline — the darker the red, the larger the loss. Dark red cells show daily losses of more than 2%.
- ◆ Gray (neutral) represents minimal movements between −0.1% and +0.1%. On these days, the price practically did not change.
Tip: Hover over any cell to see the exact closing price and percentage change for that trading day. This allows you to instantly identify whether a price movement was moderate or extreme.
Reading the heatmap correctly
A heatmap is more than a colorful overview — it reveals patterns that remain invisible in pure numerical data. The key is not to look at individual cells in isolation, but to recognize connections and clusters.
Identifying trends and phases
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.
Identifying sideways markets
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.
Shock days and extreme movements
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.
Comparing years
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.
Typical patterns among the platinum group metals
Rhodium, ruthenium and iridium are traded on no exchange. There is neither a fixing nor a futures market for them; the price comes about as a quotation by individual dealers, who set it once per working day. That shapes the calendar more than any season — and makes it read differently from the calendar of an exchange-traded metal.
Long unchanged phases
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.
Autocatalysts as the single large buyer
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.
Supply from only a few mines
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.
Jumps instead of movements
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.
Important: Seasonal rules can hardly be established for these three metals. The series are short, the number of market participants is small, and individual events override every pattern. Here the calendar is useful above all for telling quiet phases apart from jumps.
Understanding volatility
For a metal without exchange trading, the calendar measures two things at once: the movement of the market, and the way the dealer carries it into the quotation. The two cannot be separated, and that is worth knowing when reading it.
A grey day is not calm
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.
Pent-up movement
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.
What the calendar is still good for 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.