➡ The latest silver survey shows that the silver market is set for its sixth consecutive annual deficit. This report also highlights the fluctuating prices of gold and silver, and the potential impact of current geopolitical events on the stock market. The silver market’s deficit is expected to increase by 15% to 46.3 million ounces in 2026. However, the report also suggests that the deficit could be much larger if ETFs are included, potentially reaching a record 318.4 million ounces.
➡ Chris Gilbert, a former Wall Street trader, shares his journey into the gold and silver space after witnessing the financial crisis in 2007-2008. He believes that the same factors that drove silver prices up to $121 are still present, and the value of the US dollar is facing difficult conditions. Gilbert also discusses the impact of the deficit on the silver price, highlighting the increased use of silver in solar panels and the resulting supply issues. He suggests that the issues he identified a decade ago have not yet fully come into play, indicating potential future shifts in the silver market.
➡ The text discusses the potential future of silver, both as an investment and in industrial use. The speaker believes that regular people will eventually turn to silver as a form of investment due to inflation. They also mention a report predicting a 46% increase in industrial demand for silver over the next decade, despite some industries finding ways to use less silver. The speaker also suggests that the demand for silver in industries like AI and data centers will not significantly decrease in the next decade.
➡ The discussion focused on the risks and trends in gold and silver markets, particularly in China. The price difference between the US and China was highlighted, with China’s higher prices possibly due to real demand and strategic reasons. The conversation also touched on China’s significant use of silver for solar panels and electronics. Lastly, the interview featured David Stein of Cuya Silver, who shared insights on the current market conditions and his company’s plans.

The latest silver survey was just released which showed the silver market on pace for the sixth straight annual deficit. And we’ll take a look at some of the highlights of this year’s world silver survey as well as a look at the pricing of both gold and silver. And of course, the latest war headlines where Trump has promised that the war is close to over again and the stock market is going to boom, as if Pam Bondi’s back in town. So welcome on in. Well, hello there, my friends and good afternoon. Chris Marcus here with you for Arcadia economics on Wednesday, April 15th.

And while you may not have realized that this is an exciting day in the silver market, it is, because we just got the latest silver survey which shows that the silver market is poised for the sixth straight annual deficit this year. And we’re going to take a quick look at some of the highlights from that report, although just before we hop in, quick look at the latest in the saga where Trump’s now saying the Iran war is very close to over and the stock market’s going to boom. I don’t know if they got a quote from Pam Bondian here, but in either case, the stock market going up, although I would just say that before you load up on call options, with the stock market already near its bubble peak high, keep in mind that a couple of months ago when we were awaiting the Supreme Court ruling, Trump said that if the Supreme Court ruled against him, we were screwed, was his exact quote.

We’re gonna owe so much money we’ll never even be able to figure out who we owe it to. So perhaps not every stock market or economic forecast that he says is to be taken literally. And also he’s threatening to fire Powell if Powell doesn’t leave on his own. So a lot happening there. But we’ll leave all that aside today and take a quick look at the gold and silver prices where we see the gold futures down 24 bucks to $4,826. And silver on the day the silver world survey for 2026 is released down an exciting seven cents to 79.46, although I think that’s better than it being down two or three bucks.

And let’s take a step back and let’s take a look right here. We’ll pull up the one year chart. Year ago, we had just gotten back over 30 after those reciprocal tariffs, we were at 32 bucks. Yes, it did go to 121, but still $79 historical territory, especially if you own mining shares. Gonna try and put this in context right but the silver miners, if you told them back here, I mean they were already happy with the $32. Yeah, they had rising costs. But if you told these guys last year that we’d have $50 silver, they’d be losing it.

Not losing money, but like losing their marbles or they’re losing their shit. There, I said it. Sorry. Cover your ears yet then? Certainly when the price was a hundred. Well, they have a high of 122. I knew 121.78 which they have up there. But it’s interesting, see the high there? They have it at 122.67. Either case it went quite a bit higher. Took 45 years to match the 1980 high and then did a 2 and a half bag since then doubled and more. I guess that’d be one and a half bags got up to 120. So it went up a lot in the two months as we saw a short squeeze that started in London, filtered over to China, has not been resolved in China, still exists in China and we have the market on pace for the sixth annual deficit.

Speaking of China, you can see here that here we got Western spot 7931 Shanghai futures 89.84. So $10 premium and silver remains near $90 in China. But back to our mining stocks here. I mean these guys would have sold some of their kidneys for $50 silver, let alone. Okay, we’re not at the highs but $80 silver, that’s a lot. And I’ll mention in there the anecdote from Kuya Silver who was approached by both Indian and Chinese solar manufacturers trying to buy his lock in his production at an 8 to $10 premium. So paying the Chinese prices.

And we’ll have a note from David at the end. And also in this interview we’re about to dig into where I was recently interviewed about what led us to all of this as well as to what we are seeing here and where that leaves us. So I think you’re in treat for a nice review of how this came about, where we may be headed. And in either case we see $79 on the day that the Silver Institute releases their report that shows we’re going to be in a deficit for another year, smaller this year. They say it’s projected to widen by 15% to 46.3 million ounces.

I think that’s incorrect. Here we look at the. I guess they’re talking about the forecast for 2026. So because here, here in terms of the headline number in 2024 we had 137.9 million ounce deficit. Then in terms of what was just reported for last year, that dropped to 40.3. So the deficit last year, at least according to one metric was a lot lower and they are forecasting that in 2026 it will grow by 6 million ounces. Although here’s the real key that a lot of people miss that if you add in the ETFs, which certainly I get it, the money can go in there quickly, it can come out of there quickly and it has been coming out in the past months really since before silver spiked to 121 towards the end of last year.

Yet if you do include that, that brings last year’s deficit to 318.4 million, which I’m pretty sure is the record historically certainly over the past 10 years. I would say so far based on the flows and pull them up for you here where you see here in 2026, silver has been coming out of the ETFs so probably not going to get 278.1. Although given the way things are going in Iran and elsewhere and just generally speaking geopolitically, I mean let’s remember this is what we think is going to happen. There’s a lot of stuff happening that could leave us in a much different world by the time we hit the end of the year.

And I would say just based on the fact that the strait remains closed and still is without any easy resolution in sight and the damage is already being done. Let’s say that we’ll check back on this and see and Silver Institute issues. A mid year update usually comes out I think in November, so about a half year away. Either case, this is what they’re reporting today. Other thing we’ll be on the watch for is demand destruction where at a higher price and and with lower economic growth due to war related issues do we see less industrial demand? That’s certainly possible.

Although keep in mind that if you have that demand destruction and you’re mining less copper of which silver is a byproduct of copper, about 75% of the silver comes from byproduct as a byproduct of other metals. So I think even in this scenario silver is going to be just fine. Quick note here. US probes suspicious Oil trades before Trump Iran pivots. We had mentioned this earlier now. Oh look at that. Oh my God. Even the CFTC is waking up and investigating something that sounds incredibly shady. How there’s some account that reportedly is making a lot of money before these headlines come out yet.

Anyway, in terms of a few other highlights here, we saw that mine production rose from 823 to 8466 in 2025. Looks like they are expecting it to be slightly down or flat. We see that industrial demand went from 679 to 657 and they’re forecasting a further decrease. And here’s the key is the solar went from 197in 2024 to 186 last year, even despite more installations. And they’re 4 forecasting down to 151 next year. And that’s primarily because of the thrifting that’s going on, which we’ve talked about quite a bit here on the channel. And if you have not heard that before, that is exactly why you want to hit that subscribe button as well as the notification bell.

And that way as the silver market unfolds in the midst of this historic environment, you will be aware of such things there because that is what we dig into amongst other things here on the channel. And either case, we look down here at total demand 1157 in 24 then down to 1130 and now forecasting down to 1112 in 2026. So certainly a lot in here. The whole report is about 80 pages, so I have not gone through it yet, but looking forward to doing so. You can find that@silverinstitute.org and now with that said, let us hand it over to my dear friend Gilbert who invited me to his conference just a few days ago where we talked and really laid out a lot of things that are happening, how this is going to combine what you can expect going forward.

So hope you enjoy. And let’s welcome Chris here with me here. How are you doing Chris Gilbert, how are you? Thanks so much for having me as part of your event and certainly an interesting time in the world. So yeah, I really like your background. I should steal this background image for our show here today. Thank you. Maybe you just need some giant silver bars behind you. Even better than the screenshot, right? Yeah, exactly. So maybe just, you know, just do the beginner because for the audience may not heard about you before. Tell us a bit of a background because I know you’ve worked in Wall street for 11 years.

So what. What sort of blood you become so falling enough in in the gold and silver space. What? Sure. Well, I guess the short version is that in 2007, 2008, I just graduated Wharton’s business school, was working as an options trader on the American Stock Exchange and watching the financial world fall apart from the subprime bubble collapsing, I had not seen that in advance. I thought, in hindsight, aren’t I the guy who was trained to have seen this? Then I started reading basically anyone I could find who had seen it in advance. Unlike what we’re hearing from the government and the banks about how it was a perfect storm, although there were some people who saw it clear as day, they were all talking about gold and silver.

Then when you saw the response to a crisis created by too much debt and printed money was to issue debt and print money even faster than before, I thought that we had not seen the end of it took about 15 or 16 years. But then, you know, we saw $121 silver a couple months ago. So quite, quite a journey it’s been. I don’t think we’ve seen the end of the silver story here, especially because the same factors that drove Silver up to 121 are still very much in play. And again, obviously there’s a lot happening in the world right now that has made things even more confusing, but certainly we can dig in and talk about any of them that you’d like, for sure.

So also you mentioned, of course, the monetary policy, right. See, do you see any hopes in the US Dollar? Is that one of the reason why you. Because I saw some of the headlines you want watching US Dollar die, right? So do you have no will not fully optimistic about the US dollar in the sort of outlook? Well, I mean, I came up with that slogan. I don’t know, it was 10 or 15 years ago. Maybe I phrase it slightly differently now. I’m not sure that we’re going to see the US dollar not exist anymore. My guess is for the foreseeable future it will be the reserve currency.

Although I would say that perhaps what it buys and its value are still facing some very difficult conditions. Even aside from the war. I mean, we already saw that that is what it is. I’m assuming I don’t need to explain that to anyone who found their way through here already. I might add though, that before the Trump administration came in, there was a fellow named Steven Myron who wrote a 41 page thesis called A Hand Guide on How to Restructure the Global Trading System. Wrote this in November of 2024. Date was not exact, although right around the time Trump was getting elected.

The following month, In December of 2024, Trump names him as his Chief of Economic Council of Advisors. Myron is now in the Fed, although what’s Interesting in that Myron talked about ad nauseam in that paper which we’ve heard since then just about every official in the Trump administration outside of the Easter bunny confirm is the concept of the overvalued dollar. Because you know, I don’t think this is a matter of opinion anymore. You can see the reasons why they want to reshore manufacturing, especially with rare earths in China and all the derivative impacts from that. So they’ve told you they want a lower dollar.

You can see why they need a lower dollar, I might add. The dollar index was at about 100, was right over 110 about two weeks before they came into office. It’s gone down quite a bit since then, has stabilized in the last half year or so. But there are a variety of reasons that I think, well, I’m not the biggest fan of trusting things governments say, especially these days, this one that they’re, they’re telling you and I, I’m confident they’re going to follow through. We’re going to get a lower dollar for a variety of reasons to keep this going.

Which makes it interesting when you think about, gee, we already had $121 silver. And that’s before, it’s really before any of the issues that led me and I think many other people into gold and silver have not only not been resolved but not even addressed. So a lot to be dealt with and my guess is by the time it’s all said and done, while I know some people are a little frustrated with the precious metal sell off since the war began, I think this is one of those times where if you take a step back and think what seems most likely to you five or ten years from now, even if you’re wondering what to do next month, take that step back, think about that.

And I would imagine, at least for me, I find that makes the, even the shorter term decisions a lot easier to navigate. Yeah, let’s take a more longer term. So let’s just talk about when you wrote a book, right? A big silver short. You have to talk about silver. That’s a few years ago already. So why, why, why do you think it takes so long to make it happen, like for the silver prize to really, really take off, like from a few years back when you wrote that book. Well, I guess the main reason is that what drove the silver price over the last year is actually a bit different than what many silver investors have been talking about for decades, where, you know, is the loss of value in the currency, seeing what the Fed is doing, seeing the Debt load.

I still don’t know how that debt ever ultimately gets addressed outside of some sort of gold revaluation that’s used to pay down debt. I think we’re well past the point. Math not. I think I would say we are well past the point mathematically where you can grow your way out of this. So, you know, 20 years ago that’s what had people buying silver when you saw what happened QE after the collapse of the subprime bubble. Yet really what drove the price in the past year was the issues from the deficit that really didn’t pop up until 2019, 2020, once you started seeing a lot more silver being used for the solar panel and some of those numbers started getting really big.

And after a long enough time, we saw that, we saw it finally matter. For a long time we were sitting here talking about deficit, this deficit that the price was around 20 bucks. It was like no one cared. Until then you finally hit an issue with a supply and a global commodity, especially an important one like silver. And then you See Now After 45 years of waiting for the price to hit $50 again, it then doubled and more in the following two months after that. So I mean, it already had its historic move. Then it quickly doubles after that.

And largely because you had a shortage in India, which quickly sparked a shortage in London. To address that, metal was sent from China and the US which has led to wouldn’t technically call it a shortage in China yet, but extreme tightness which has been evidenced by an 8 to $10 at times even higher premium between Shanghai and New York ever since the day after Christmas has not gone away. I have at least one silver miner who was directly contacted by solar panel manufacturers in both India and China trying to buy. They’re trying to lock in his production at the 8 to $10 premium, which to me is very indicative along with the spread of the fact that.

All right, well, if you have that plant and you’re about to have a $200 million plant sit there idle, well, you know, you got to pay 90 instead of 80 for your silver. You do what you have to do. This is a smaller miners. This was Kuya Silver. And I think it’s very well run company, although not the first company that someone who’s in desperate need of silver would come across. And remember asking David Stein, who runs Kuya Silver, you know, if they’re calling you, they probably called a lot of bigger companies first. And he said yes, that certainly was the case.

So in that, you know, the issues that I was writing about back in 2009 or 2010, we haven’t even seen those come into play. I mean, even despite, you know, we had a surge of silver buying over the past couple months that’s died down a little bit, but we still really haven’t seen people rush into silver outside of the existing silver and gold bugs. But I mean, we, we got a little taste of that at times in the past couple months where the mainstream was coming in. But let me put it like this. My, my brother, who’s heard me talk about silver for 15, almost 20 years now, when silver had hit 50 or it hit 100, you know, aside from the fact that I asked him if he was aware of it, he was not.

So I think you don’t have the regular people who are sitting out there just, you know, working at corporate America, putting money into a 401k. We haven’t gotten to the point where they’re out there saying, hey, I need to get rid of these dollars to pile into silver. I still think that’s going to happen at some point, at least to some degree. I don’t know if it will be necessarily because, you know, my brother or, you know, the average guy is sitting there thinking about the currency value that might, may well get there. And one thing I’ve wondered about for the past couple of years is that we got this wave of inflation that we were told was transitory and has the inflation rates over the Fed’s 2% mandate.

Now that we’re in April 20th of 2026, we now hit the five year mark so that transitory inflation didn’t go away. And a couple years ago you saw everyone talking about inflation, not just the gold and silver bugs. And I remember wondering, okay, that opened a new set of eyes, similar how my eyes were open during the housing bubble. A lot of people had their eyes open during COVID more since then. I wondered if we get another wave of inflation like that, which I think is inevitable, and what we’ve seen over the past five or six weeks could well be the trigger of that.

You know, if you, if you get inflation again to the degree that people were noticing it and feeling it every time they bought something like we were seeing a couple years ago, does that get more people who have not thought about gold and silver thinking, gee, there is something wrong with the money. I don’t know if it’ll necessarily be a binary point, but each of these situations adds up and has its impact. So how about the industrial demand? Are you looking or are you seeing in the future in the next five years or plus the industrial demands of silver is gonna increase.

Yeah, well, it’s interesting. Oxford Economics put out a report, this was back in 2023, so I guess three years or so already, where they looked at the industrial demand for silver over the next decade and they came back with a forecast of expecting it to increase by 46%. Now, if you want to say that here on April 9th of 2026, that if there’s ever been a time where we probably know less about what the world will look like in 10 years than now, fair enough. Just at least as one group that has looked at the industrial demand and studied it, that was the answer they came back with.

Now, a few things within that. We’ll get the latest Silver Institute numbers next week, either April 14th or 15th. They put out a preview forecast back in November where they actually had a lower amount of silver used in solar. Even though despite, I remember last year because I was writing a report on this, I was looking at the end of the 2024, all of the solar experts thought, yes, we’ll continue to see growth, but it’s going to start to level off. It actually was quite strong. Yet Silver Institute, their forecast, they believe that the net amount of silver used was actually going to go lower.

Now, if you’re wondering how that makes sense, part of the main part of the explanation is that the solar panel manufacturers have been doing a lot of thrifting, which means figuring out ways to use less silver per panel. That has been a pretty active focus for a couple of years, I would say. I was actually writing an article about it yesterday, I think of the HJT panels which were becoming a bigger part of the future. They had reduced it like by more than 60% in some cases. So it’s been a significant amount. We heard a couple companies, Bloomberg had an article that some manufacturers are actually looking at replacing it with copper, which I don’t know if it is as easy to say, like, all right, well, they’re gonna move all the panels over to copper.

With one of the primary reasons being that these come with a long warranty. So there’s that risk. They start putting copper into the panels. Then 10, 15 years from now, you’re getting a lot of return panels because of that. So anyway, to make a long story short, I think you could see the solar number which has been the primary driver, you could see that come down. On the other hand, wonder how the governments are changing their green projections, where at least till the Trump administration came in, I mean, India Some of the other countries did the amount of green energy they were calling for.

If we’re, I mean I think the numbers are a little bit silly because it’s like we would need to mine more copper in the next 10 years and has been mined in the history of the planet when we’ve highly neglected a lot of these minerals which is why they’re being added as strategic critical minerals. So I don’t know that we’re necessarily even if we wanted to could get to those goals. But solar could come down just based on what we’ve seen yet if governments still want to go green, that could bring it back up. Although I don’t know that I, I think you could see solar come down yet still I don’t think the demand for silver industrially is going to go away.

We’re seeing a different style of warfare now that’s dependent on AI and drone warfare. I think you’ll see the AI and all these data centers that need to build as we have electrical grid issues. That is one of the reasons why that dollar has to be lower so that we can reshore. So again I don’t expect the demand to sizably go away over the next decade. Will it be. Could you. I do think Silver Institute is going to have a lower, a lower overall industrial demand figure this year. But I mean over the next five to 10 years, I mean if we just go by what the government say where they’re starting strategic stockpiles of many critical minerals, not just silver, but also including silver which was added.

I’m guessing that there’s not an abundance of silver just lying around like we’ve seen in decades past. I don’t think that I would expect to see that in this anytime soon. Yeah, let’s, let’s the last part of this discussion, let’s talk about silver stocks. So any tell us any like silver stocks that you own, what’s your criteria? Well, I mean in terms of the stocks I know you have some people on here probably better qualified to give in depth analysis on particular names. I have a basket of stocks that silver stocks that I own. I am of the school of thought that relative to today’s bullion prices, both the gold and silver mining stocks are undervalued.

I would say one of the key criteria especially however many years I’ve been doing a show and talking to a lot of silver miners is that more than anything start with the management team and especially we saw a glimpse of this when we had silver over 100 bucks where all of a Sudden there’s silver experts coming out of left field, new projects being launched each day, which you know, in some cases is a good thing. But I would, I would say the best piece of advice I could give to anyone before buying any stock, find a video of someone for management speaking explaining what they’re doing.

You can often get a feel for, you know, here’s someone who has a good understanding of their business running a legitimate company versus, you know, in today’s world. I think it’s unfortunate but there is a lot of shenanigans going on out there. You know. Then with that said, as someone who probably has been a little too concentrated in my allocations at times over the years, I mean you can diversify, there’s different levels of risks. Obviously if you go with the producers, here’s a company that you know is going to be selling silver, they have mines in production versus you know, you can go on the exploration route which when you hit them can give you.

When you hear those stories about the old timers talking about their 10, 20 or 30 baggers, certainly can happen. And I think if there’s ever been, let me put it like this, we’re in an environment more conducive to having things like that occur than between, let’s say 2012 and 2020 when the silver price was going down. Of course, the more speculative you get, you know, if you buy an exploration company where you know, the silver price goes up but it turns out they never find any mineable land. So the risk is all priced in, at least theoretically.

And just making sure that what you’re targeting matches your underlying view I think goes a long way, especially in times like this. Thank you Chris. Our time is pretty short today but I hope to continue to discussing more about with you on Gold and silver as a follow up. But thank you for your time and being with us here on on this discussion. Chris. Well, I appreciate that Gilbert, thanks so much for having me and hope everyone out there watching also doing well and staying safe right now. Well, thanks for tuning in and being here with us today in the midst of some turbulent times in the world.

But hopefully the show is helping along with your journey. So if you had fun, hit the thumbs up button or go ahead and share the episode. If you’d like more people to understand what’s going on in these markets. Few last notes and data points here. Here is our Shanghai Silver spread which you see jumped as high as 18 right in the beginning of the year as the price was soaring to 120 in the US and got up to the upper 130s in China spread remaining around $9. And that is a key thing that I think many are missing because you can say speculation, money printing this, that you have an issue in China and that’s why there’s that spread as it is and probably not unrelated to the metal.

We’ve seen come out of the COMEX to address the low inventories in Shanghai and I would say either tomorrow or Friday we’ll dig back into those again. So great reason to hit the subscribe button and notification bell so you can be aware of how those numbers are looking years before Wall street ever finds out. And also I would point out that in the interview I mentioned how David Stein of Cuya Silver was the guy who talked about the phone calls he received from China and India trying to buy his production at an elevated premium, addition to the fact that they just supersized their 2026 drill program.

Did have David on the show last week. And to get a better idea of exactly what the silver miners are seeing in the conditions, let’s take a listen here. I was talking to a trader recently and they indicated that, that the China premiums were real and that are still going on. So when, when you show the, the Shanghai price against the, the London or New York price, I initially thought there was some other reason for that, that it was related to tax restrictions or something like that. But it does really seem that from what I’m hearing from traders very recently, this is a real demand driven premium.

Now whether it’s also to encourage, you know, ships with silver metals, silver concentrate to land in China and unload in China versus their competitor countries nearby like Japan and Korea that also need a lot of silver that could be part of it. There could be kind of a little bit of a strategic rationale for that premium. But that does seem to be a real aspect of the market. Right now China is the biggest user of silver with the, the solar panels and the electronics being the main, the main uses and on the industrial side. And yeah, it’s to the best of my information as someone who’s in the market, that is still going on today.

Yeah. And you can certainly understand why when you take a look at the inventories backing China, aside from if you’re a silver investor and you’re looking at this and thinking wow, that’s great. I mean for the rest, for the functionality of the world at least that depends on silver. I mean this is somewhat disturbing, David. We the LBMA hit issues when their free float got down to 140 million ounces. They got their teeth kicked in. Here’s China being backed by 20, 21.3 million ounces. Well, thank you to David and thank you to Kuya Silver, who is a proud sponsor of the show and is a producing silver company that, as I mentioned earlier, is also ramping up their dream drill program, certainly at a perfect time.

And to find out a little bit more about what David had to say, well, just click on this video that’s coming your way now.
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