Palladium Seen Beating Gold With Record Car Sales: Commodities

Investors are buying palladium at the fastest pace in more than a year as analysts predict rising demand and declining supply will turn this quarter’s worst-performing precious metal into the best by December.

Holdings in palladium-backed exchange-traded products rose 14 percent this year, poised for the best quarter since the end of 2010, data compiled by Bloomberg show. The metal will average $850 an ounce in the final three months of 2012, 32 percent more than now, according to the median estimate of 11 analysts surveyed by Bloomberg. They expect a gain of 15 percent for gold, 13 percent for silver and 11 percent for platinum.