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Well the sun has set on our little trip to Molokai and we made it back safely late Saturday night. I have a few work related things to catch up on and one or two fire department issues and then I'm back in the saddle.

You may have heard that there will be a platinum ETF or two coming shortly. The platinum market has a lot of moving parts with regard to supply and industrial consumption.

Because of this there may be an issue with the ETFs being able to to buy and store the metal. I don't know how this will work out but the market for the metal is complex and I am hard pressed to think the too many individual investors will need a platinum ETF.

This is not to say that platinum ETFs shouldn't exist. They will facilitate speculation for those interested in that, some people will know the market well enough to trade it and if I were paying someone to manage a commodity pool I would want him to have access to ETFs if he thought they were a good way to play the space.

I take issue with a lot of the things that Jack Bogle says about ETFs but I agree with one big point of his which is that most people simply don't need exposure to segments where products have been created or will be created in the future. This point has nothing to do with whether they should exist or not.

I feel like I know a little about the platinum market but not that much and I have no plans to add it in for clients.