Washington (Platts)--22Feb2013/518 pm EST/2218 GMT

Rhodium prices continued to advance this week in sympathy with platinum and palladium, which moved higher earlier in the week on renewed labor tensions in South Africa.

The Platts New York Dealer Rhodium price rose to $1,200-1,265/oz from $1,150-1,250 last week. Much of the buying occurred early in the week, when NYMEX April platinum touched $1,700 and March palladium broke above $765 on news of more clashes between rival South African unions at Anglo America Platinum's Rustenburg operations.

But rhodium prices moved lower later in the week as platinum and palladium sold off behind losses in gold and silver, which were pressured by rising equities, a strong US dollar, and technical factors.

"A lot of it had to do with other PGMs," a large PGM refiner said of rhodium. "Once the others started to go into the abyss, rhodium lost a little interest. It remains to be seen how long it will stay down here," he said.

The refiner and other sources agreed that rhodium had traded up to $1,275 early in the week, but that the market had fallen to $1,220-1,225 by late Thursday. A second PGM refiner even doubted on that level.

"If he could find someone that would pay him $1,200 today, I'd be very surprised," the refiner said. "I would be happy to sell him some, because there were a lot of people not willing to pay anything for it today."

The selloff in gold led one physical trader to say of PGMs, "I don't think there is a lot of appetite for any of this stuff right now, other than for the dead-cat bounce we're seeing" in equities. A dead-cat bounce occurs when prices rise sharply after a severe selloff.

Rhodium often moves in sympathy with platinum and palladium. But because of the metal's heavy industrial usage, especially in the auto sector, rhodium is prone to sharper downturns than platinum and palladium, which have other consumer and industrial applications.

--Nick Jonson, nick_jonson@platts.com --Edited by Richard Rubin, richard_rubin@platts.com