Six weeks was all it took for the palladium market to get spooked into a panic.

When a major mining strike in South Africa shutdown all palladium production in the country on January 23rd, the clock started ticking on the palladium price, with analysts expecting a sharp rise in value if the strike wasn’t resolved quickly.

Well it wasn’t resolved quickly, and six weeks later on March 4th the inevitable happened… palladium punched through its upper resistance of $760 an ounce held in place throughout the previous 12 months. It has kept right on climbing ever since, rising to a multi-year high of $860 yesterday for a jump of 15% since the strike began, with plenty more upside expected.

“We believe the market is working under a structural production/consumption deficit,” chief precious metals analyst at HSBC, James Steel, revealed. “We are therefore bullish medium to longer term.”

Just what is behind palladium’s “structural production/consumption deficit”? Will this be enough to set palladium apart from the other precious metals that have been stuck in the mud for over two years?