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pmbug said: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.