Platinum (PL) delivery months at a glance — every contract's record over its tenure as the lead month.
Futures Seasonality · Contract-Month Study
Every platinum contract 2010–2026, measured over its seat as the lead contract · Updated for 2026
Platinum runs a true quarterly rotation, four seats of three months each, and its thin book gives the almanac its wildest recent chapters: the two historically weakest seats just produced the metal’s two biggest winners, +45% and +33.5%, as the platinum revival met a market with no depth to absorb it.
Most seasonality tables slice the calendar. This one slices the contracts. Each delivery month below is measured over its time as the lead contract: from the open of the day it takes over the front of the board to the close of the day it hands off the lead. No roll gaps, no splicing, one contract per observation. Each platinum seat is a true quarter, roughly 60 to 66 trading days, and the market’s thin book means seat records here carry wider error bars than the deep markets’.
Platinum (PL) — Average Change by Seat
Average change while each contract leads the board. Hover any bar for the detail.
Each row is one of platinum’s four quarterly delivery months: seats risen since 2010, average change, and average high-to-low range. “Typically leads” is the median window.
| Contract | Typically leads | Up / Down | Win rate | Avg change | Avg range |
|---|
Table view doubles as the accessible read of the chart above.
Q1 is the steady seat. The April contract, holding January through March, has won 11 of 16 with a peculiar signature: its peak lands mid-seat almost every year (only 1 of 16 finished near an extreme, the study’s lowest), historically a January entry and late-February exit trade.
Spring has been the fade, until it wasn’t. The July seat’s 31% and −5.8% median made it the board’s worst for a decade; then 2025’s +33.5% announced the revival in exactly the seat where the metal used to be ignored. The old lean now deserves loose hands.
The autumn seat is the thin-market parable. Fifteen quiet, mostly red years, then 2026’s +45%, the biggest platinum tenure on record, when the metals squeeze reached the smallest book on the boards. Thin markets do not do medium-sized moves when the flow finally arrives.
A seat’s record tells you how its stretch of the year has treated the lead contract historically. It doesn’t tell you where the current one sits today, whether this cycle is tracking the record or fighting it, or the levels that matter into the next session. That is what The Traders Brief does every morning, across energy, metals, and the indexes.
See today’s read →Which platinum contract month is historically strongest?
The April (J) seat by count: 11 of 16 (69%), with its gains typically peaking mid-seat rather than at the hand-off.
Which platinum contract month is weakest?
The July (N) spring seat, 5 of 16 (31%) with a −5.8% median, though 2025’s +33.5% in that very seat is the strongest sign the old pattern may be breaking.
Why does platinum only have four contract months?
Platinum runs a true quarterly rotation: Jan, Apr, Jul, and Oct each lead for roughly three months.
Contract tendencies are drawn from 16 years of individual Platinum futures contract history (2010–2026), each measured over its own seat as the lead contract, and describe the past. They are not a forecast and not trading advice. Markets can and do trade against their record in any given year. © 2026 The Traders Brief.