Physical Gold and Silver shortage

[oyarde]

1/4 ounce gold eagles drying up

 

[pmbug]

Silver Presents the Magical Metal Mystery

By all accounts, silver has been in a structural deficit, with global demand exceeding global production, for over four years now:Silver saw its fourth year of a major deficit in 2024 as a slight 2% rise in supply and 3% dip in demand still meant a shortfall of around 150Moz (4,600t). Above...

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[oyarde]

Personally Id say Im good w/ silver drying up if it does. Seems to lag too far back

 

[pmbug]

I updated my silver vault analysis (LBMA, COMEX, SFE/SGE) for April:

If these reports are to be believed, over the last three months, the amount of silver stored in global exchange vaults (LBMA + COMEX + SFE/SGE) has increased 90.667 mtoz ( 2,820 metric tons) all while silver is in a structural deficit with global demand exceeding global production. It does not make sense and I suspect that someone (looking at you LBMA) is lying.

Silver Demand Drivers (and vault totals)

Update (see post #115 for last month):LBMA - As at end February 2025, ... There were also 22,462 tonnes of silver (a 4.5% decrease on previous month)... ETF report for 7 March claims 551.648 mtoz vaulted in London. That leaves a total of ~170.536 mtoz of silver in the London vaults not owned by...

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[oyarde]

Ive never believed in a silver scarcity, Just about anytime in past 12 1/4 yrs I can tink of i could get on ebay and buy 3 silver eagles at 120 FRNs or less , w/ raw product and mnfg cost representing well over 83 percent of price. I could be wrong but even toug most people own none doesnt mean not a lot out tere. 120 buys very little meat at grocery store

 

[pmbug]

The dinosaurs at the LBMA finally published their monthly vault stock total for the month of June. The LBMA's free float is has shrunk ~14.2 mtoz (~441.7 tonnes), slightly exceeding the net increases to the COMEX and SGE/SFE for the month. The total global free float silver stock across the COMEX, SFE/SGE and LBMA at end June/start July is ~630.925 mtoz ( 3.57 mtoz less than at end of last month).

As a reminder, per the latest COT report, as of June 24, there were 152,545 short contracts on the COMEX representing the sale of 762,725,000 troy ounces (23,723.4 metric tons) of silver. COMEX has sold ~131.8 mtoz (~4099 tonnes) more paper silver than currently exists as free float in global vaults.

Number crunching with citations to sources posted here:

Silver Demand Drivers (and vault totals)

Same microcosm is happening to platinum now and is a much smaller market. The other thing about silver is it is not as popular overseas because of higher taxes than gold. If the Europeans removed VAT (20%) and/or sales tax on silver it would be a great place to store wealth, but the overall...

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[pmbug]

Back in December/January, when the first round of Trump tariff fears hit the market (before it was clarified that gold and silver bullion were to exempt), EFP spreads blew out and metal flowed heavily from London to New York.

Tariff fears (and EFP spreads) eased on April 2 when exemption policy was clarified. Metal still flowed into COMEX vaults, but LBMA claimed that their vaults were no longer seeing outflows.

Today their isn't any tariff fear driving the metals, but the silver EFP spread is blowing out again. This should encourage bullion banks to move physical metal from London to New York again.

Additionally, the SGE (China) premium to London is also on the rise again albeit less dramatically than the COMEX futures-London spot EFP spread. This should also be encouraging metal to flow from London to China.

It remains an open question as to just how much is left in the well (LBMA vaults). If you trust in their overall vault stock total published once a month number, they claimed to have ~4,642 metric tons of silver free float available at the start of August.

However, SLV and other ETFs have been reporting large increases (over 2,700 metric tons total) to their vault stock this month which is typically just a book entry change of ownership of metal in the London vaults (ie. they have likely been eating at the LBMA's free float all month).

Reports of silver imports from Switzerland appear to be almost two orders of magnitude less than what the ETFs were eating (just ~48 metric tons in July).

The LBMA is due to publish their once a month stock report in a few days. I will be amazed if their report doesn't reflect a drain on the available free float.

It really seems like circumstances are pointing to the LBMA running out of available silver stock in the very near future.

 

[pmbug]

MEA CULPA! I made a mistake in my previous post. The SLV+ETFs 2,700 tons figure is a "year to date" and not "this month" figure. SLV added roughly 250 metric tons in August. Total ETF inflows were around 541 metric tons. So it's just one order of magnitude greater than the Swiss July import figure of 48 metric tons. Still significant, but not as dramatic as I had incorrectly stated.

 

[pmbug]

 

[acptulsa]

Gold and platinum are both fluctuating quite a bit, but silver just keeps marching up.

 

[pmbug]

They will all go higher.