➡ The financial markets are buzzing due to a possible shortage of silver, as reported by Bloomberg. Dolly Barton and Silver, a mining company, has successfully completed a large drilling program, which has led to the discovery of more silver deposits. This has boosted the company’s standing, especially during a time when silver prices are on the rise. The CEO of Dolly, Sean Kunken, is planning for the future based on these positive results.

So we’re watching a modern version of the London gold pool play out on a screen, instead of a trading floor. The same battle, different tools. Back then, they defended a price of gold which underpinned the dollar. Today, we are defending a belief in the dollar’s dominance over everything else. Welcome to the Morning Markets and Metals with Vince Lancy, where each morning Vince brings you the financial and precious metals news to get you ready for your day. And now, here’s Vince. Good morning. After 30 years of watching gold get repressed, two truths still guide how this market behaves when someone bigger than us decides it’s gone far enough.

The first truth is the speed rule. Gold can go up, but not too fast. For years, the threshold was $20 a day. If it moved more than that, it would stall or get knocked down the next day, and for months afterwards. $20 a day. Also, for the most part, coincided with 2%. And the joke became, on the trading floors, gold’s up 2%, go to lunch. Eventually, that became a 2% rule. Because if gold rose more than 2% in one session, odds were overwhelming that within a week or two, it will be pushed significantly lower. This is statistically borne out.

That pattern worked because the people managing the system didn’t want gold in the headlines. They could live with a steady climb, but never a rush. Now, the number’s bigger, around $80 a day. But the principle hasn’t changed. The pattern worked until it did. But there was another rule related to that pattern. The second rule was narrative control. Gold could never be celebrated. It’s allowed to exist, but not to lead. Because if it starts competing with the dollar as a safe haven, confidence in the system weakens. So long as gold stays quiet, the dollar looks strong. But that is changing.

Gold’s up more than 2%. Multiple times for the first time in years. And it’s everywhere. Bloomberg, mainstream media, analysts, Alex Jones. Not a person to be ignored. The headlines all say the same thing. Gold is replacing the dollar. We’ve reached a point where Washington can’t ignore it. In my view, we’re at war, not with guns yet, but with perception. It’s a fight for potentially the soul of the dollar, at least as the world sees it. And it’s starting to look a lot like the London gold pool. Back in the 1960s, the US and Britain dumped gold into the London market to keep the price fixed at $35 an ounce.

This was pre futures markets. They could do that only as long as they had gold to sell and confidence to spare. When the world started calling their bluff, when the French and others began demanding real metal instead of paper, they ran out of both. That was the end of the pool. And eventually the gold standard itself, Bretton Woods. Now here we are again. Gold’s near $4,200, trading as high as essentially $4,400. And the behavior feels eerily similar to us. Every time we rally, we get slammed up one day, down the next. Open interest stays flat while prices make new highs, like a hockey fight where the players have stopped playing and just watched the two big fighting types slug it out.

Who’s in that fight? Well, one side, staying out of the fight now, we think, speculatively speaking, macro discretionary funds, the big real money players are taking profits and stepping aside. The bullion banks are covering shorts. The participants are the official sector led by what we think should be the BIS or other central banks doing what they’ve always done. Cap the rally, let it cool down, and then release it again. I used to call that the cap and trade effect. But this time feels heavier. It’s been four days in a row of the same pattern. Rally, slam, repeat.

But now there’s a buyer after the slam, making it rally again. That’s not normal market behavior. That’s war. And the question is, if someone’s defending, what are they defending against? Who’s buying so aggressively that official hands have to hold the line? My speculation is simple. This is geopolitical. It’s tied to negotiations between Washington and Beijing, maybe even preparation for the Trump G meeting. Gold has become part of the bargaining table. The bigger point is this. Keeping the gold price under control has always been a confidence game. For decades, the West projected certainty. Our money, our rules, our markets.

And that confidence kept gold quiet. But confidence games end the same way. Somebody calls the bluff and you have to put up or shut up. I think the bluff is being called now. And I think we’re starting to put up. That’s what happened in 1968, except we ended up not putting up in the end. And it’s what may be happening again now. The other side, call it the bricks, call it whatever you want, has enough conviction and probably enough metal to push back. And that would put us at kind of a stalemate. So we’re watching a modern version of the London gold pool play out on a screen instead of a trading floor.

The same battle, different tools. Back then, they defended a price of gold, which underpinned the dollar. Today, we are defending a belief in the dollar’s dominance over everything else. It doesn’t have to end today, but a line has been drawn in the sand. And given recent events, we’re pretty confident in this. For now, as traders, we’re sitting out and watching the hockey fight. But make no mistake, this is about much more than gold. It’s about the world testing the dollar’s will. And like every confidence game, it only lasts as long as everyone believes. If it gets them up $4,400, where will the next line in the sand be? Good morning, everyone.

Here I am. I’m Vince Lancy. This is the gold fix rundown. Ten year yields are offered unchanged. The dollar is up 35. The S&P 500 is down 3, NASDAQ is down 12. The VIX is up a little bit. Gold is down $137 at 42.19. Silver is down 49. Trading 49.67, down $2.70, down 3.2%, and down 5.2%, respectively. Copper is $4.93, down $0.05. Plus, WTI is up $0.77. Natural gas is up a little bit as well. Bitcoin down $1,200. I think that’s a mixed bag right now. Platinum also getting whacked, shellacked. Gold, silver up almost two, trading $0.85.

And grains are mixed with soybeans bucking the trend a little bit higher. There’s the homepage. We’re going to talk a little bit about, a little bit more about the story on the top right-hand side. China calls gold bluff, US pushes back. That’s a written version of something like what we just talked about. Well, we have seen these past few days in gold’s price action as a direct confrontation between the two biggest players in gold. And when it comes less than a month after China directly attacked the LBMA franchise and US dollar dominance as gold fixed directly and exclusively cataloged in, must read China is going after the BIS now.

When you combine those things with this price action, well, lines are being drawn in the sand, bluffs are being called, and people are stepping up to the plate. That continues in the premium post. China calls gold’s bluff, US pushes back, and we just did a little narrative about that. Incidentally, for people asking, I feel very healthy. I’m loving life. And let’s just say nothing should negative should befall me, health-wise. Related post, Bloomberg analysts, gold as the last safe collateral. That was Zero Edge published the Bloomberg analyst piece and we broke it down and added some color to it.

There is only one buyer of all metals, founders and first look. That’s our take on the Deutsche Bank report. Hat tip, Zero Edge, which it’s almost beginning to feel like Europe is doing this because the European banks are now piling on saying gold is more important than the dollar. Again, very similar. It’s very Tom Llongo observation, I know, but you hang out with the guy enough, it starts to make sense. LBMA’s good delivery brand loses its shine on IGR scandal. That’s a news item. Anyway, you can see the rest. Must read, China is going after the BIS.

Now, that was a month ago, we noted that China’s foray into storing gold for central banks was a direct attack on the BIS’s and London’s business model. A direct attack. And now this is happening. We’re being forced to defend gold. Anyway, no coincidences today. Dada on deck, none scheduled. And if they were, we wouldn’t see them anyway. Let’s pull up a chart for a second. There’s the gold deli, bullish engulfing, probably bearish engulfing, whatever label you want to give it, it’s war. So the question is, will China buy it here? That’s why I think it’s buying.

Will macro discretionary buy here? Probably. Maybe some. Will the bullion banks that are long gamma, wink, wink, the squid, buy it there? Probably. Anyway, we would not be surprised if the market stayed in this range until the Xi Trump meeting. We would, however, expect the market to crack lower during U.S. hours now. They need to break the cycle. That’s becoming more obvious now. I’m Vince. Well, thank you, Vincent, as always, for today’s show in this exciting time in the financial markets, especially as the LBMA, according to Bloomberg, thinks that this isn’t just a dislocation of silver between geographic locations, but that there’s actually a shortage of silver.

That is Bloomberg’s LBMA source. Not my words, although I am starting to agree that that stunningly may be the case. Not stunning in one sense since I’ve been seeing this build for years, but when it actually happens, it sure is stunning. And just one final note before we wrap up, did have some news from Dolly Bart and Silver to pass along as they have completed their 56,131 meter drill program that included 84 drill holes, all as part of their 2025 Kitzold Valley Exploration Program, which confirmed resource expansion through step out and infill drilling at the Wolf and Homestake deposits.

And as CEO Sean Kunken, who you’ve seen several times on the show, we’ll be having back on with David Morgan soon enough. He imagines early season high grade wide silver results from the Wolf fame backed up the expansion of the 2025 drill program from 35,000 meters to 55,000 meters at Kitzold Valley with successful step outs and exciting new mineralized zones that give them a clear line of sight on the next set of priorities. And obviously that’s been helpful to Dolly at the same time that we’ve had a silver price rally and you can see on Monday of 41 cents almost 10% on the news and certainly has been a good year for Dolly Bart and Silver.

Of course things work out well when you’re increasing your ounces in the midst of a historic silver rally and to find out a little bit more about them. And all here is the last call that we did on the show with Sean Kunken, the CEO of Dolly. And this one is with David Morgan and it’s coming your way now. [tr:trw].

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