➡ The gold and silver markets experienced a strong surge, with gold reaching over $4,029. However, after the Federal Reserve cut rates by 25 basis points, the markets, including gold, silver, and stocks, dropped significantly. Despite this, gold seems to be more resilient than stocks in the aftermath of the Fed announcement. The future of gold and silver remains uncertain, but it’s noted that we are in a buying season, which could influence market behavior.

The Reserve Bank of India will repatriate 64 tons in the first half of 2026, expanding domestic holdings to nearly 576 tons. The move follows global reserve seizures in Russia and Afghanistan, highlighting the risks of storing sovereign assets abroad. Analysts call it a defensive strategy to safeguard monetary sovereignty as financial warfare intensifies. Gold now accounts for nearly 14% of India’s total reserves. Welcome to the Morning Markets and Metals with Vince Lancey, 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, everyone.

I’m Vince Lancey. This is the Gold Fix Market Rundown. There’s the home page. We have some stories to cover today as well as analysis. The first story is, India repatriates more gold to guard sovereign assets. The LBMA in the second story in Kyoto has turned bullish on gold and silver. And Korea plans to add gold reserves. Plus, we have some related stories we’ll be getting to. But let’s start with the markets. Tenure yields are up 2. The dollar is up 19-20 points. The S&P 500 is up 3. NASDAQ is up 20. The VIX is down about 1.

Gold is up 50. Near the highs, not on the highs. Silver is up 68. Near the highs, not on the highs. That’s at $48.15. Copper is down 3 cents. WTI is down 20. Natural gas is up 2. Bitcoin down 600 after getting shellacked yesterday with stocks. We’ll talk about that in a second. Ethereum down. Palladium up 18. Platinum up 6. Gold, silver, 82 and change. And grains are mixed with wheat down. Okay, those are the stories. So we have those stories and we have some related stories we would like to get to. So let’s start with that.

Starting with the first story, India repatriates more gold to guard sovereign assets. India is accelerating efforts to bring its gold reserves home. The Reserve Bank of India repatriated 64 tons in the first half of 2026 or will repatriate 64 tons in the first half of 2026, expanding domestic holdings to nearly 576 tons. The move follows global reserve seizures in Russia and Afghanistan, highlighting the risks of storing sovereign assets abroad. Analysts call it a defensive strategy to safeguard monetary sovereignty as financial warfare intensifies. Gold now accounts for nearly 14% of India’s total reserves.

Second story, the LBMA in Kyoto has turned bullish on both gold and silver. Shocking. The Moon at the Lemon Bullion Market Association conference in Kyoto was firmly bullish even after gold’s sharp pullback. A survey of attendees forecast gold near $5,000 and silver close to $60 by next October. Dealers report brisk physical buying or dips while central banks like Korea plan to expand reserves. Analysts view the correction as a healthy consolidation within a broader uptrend with physical demand and official sector accumulation anchoring long-term strength in metals. We’re happy to hear the LBMA is on board with that.

The check from China must have cleared. Third story, Korea plans to add gold reserves while several Asian nations, including the Philippines and Korea, weigh China’s offer to vault gold regionally. South Korea is preparing to re-enter the gold market for the first time since 2013, joining a growing list of central banks expanding bullion holdings. The Bank of Korea says it will consider new purchases from a quote medium to long-term perspective with timing dependent on market conditions. The move underscores how official sector demand remains a major driver of gold’s 50% rally this year even as China courts foreign central banks to store reserves locally in BRICS vaults.

We would also note personal comment. This comes on the heels of Korea cutting deals with the U.S. So do not think those things are unrelated. The next story is a point of pride. Yesterday, we said on a report in the morning, we discussed it. The report was titled gold retakes 4,000 CTA sold to deeper pockets. Now, we said essentially yesterday morning that CTA longs puked gold and silver. We broke down that report for subscribers. In it, we described the selling as CTA driven, short-term momentum selling and noted that deeper pocketed players were on the other side buying.

Not the deepest pocketed players, but deeper pocketed players. We said the downside wasn’t done, but that move looked healthy and was likely shaking out weaker hands. Hours later, thankfully, a zero hedge piece by Bloomberg macro analyst Simon White confirmed that. The latest data shows CTAs did in fact sell more yesterday. You can find that chart and story on zero hedge in one of their premium posts. We’ve included the link to that story at the bottom. Our own related stories. This morning we sent out two stories. The first was silver, gold and related collateral shrinkage.

It’s an excerpt from a piece by a market executive recalling his early trading floor lessons about what real collateral truly is using examples of the Pearl from Steinbeck’s book, silver, gold, and crypto. He describes good collateral, a shrinking universe of good collateral as something real, tangible, and mobile. It resonated with us because of the floor aspect and the fact that we used to read on the floor as well as he did. We shared that with people. The second post sent is a founder’s podcast on working thesis about China reportedly paying interest on gold that citizens store with state channels and paying that interest in gold that ensures steady long-term demand for physical metal inside.

So call that a working thesis by us, but it has major implications we feel. First, it guarantees consistent flow demand. It takes it from a stock trade to a flow trade. Second, it signals to the BRICS partners that China isn’t treating gold accumulation as a one-time trade, but as a structural policy. And third, it pressures Western collateral markets, which will continue to shrink if they want to do business with the BRICS block. All of this is obviously bullish for gold. We published the full breakdown showing how it fits the broader story of China’s de-dollarization drive since 2009.

This is nearly the next chapter in everything that since the story we wrote in 2023 saying that China is taking gold public, which is quite literally what they’re doing. Next, sell gold and buy Bitcoin. The sell gold buy Bitcoin discussion grows, but markets do not yet believe. And that is, we’ve noticed that Senator Loomis has been, well, she’s been a proponent of Bitcoin for some time, but she’s re-upped, she’s doubled down on her efforts for strategic Bitcoin reserve, which we have no problem with. We think it should be. We just shouldn’t talk about it, but we’ll be expanding on that soon.

But here’s our view. Now, this is not your mainstream view here. Senator Loomis seems tasked with promoting Bitcoin at gold’s expense. Washington appears frustrated with gold’s high price and is trying to steer capital towards Bitcoin instead. The motive for us is clear. A rise in gold price reinforces the BRICS narrative of de-dollarization. A rise in Bitcoin price, on the other hand, supports the Western narrative technology over the pet rock. It’s friendlier to data-driven digital asset economies and less threatening to fiat frameworks. Look, there’s a wall going up dividing the world. Your collateral is gold or your collateral is the dollar wrapped in crypto.

There’s good on both sides. One gives you safety, the other gives you growth. It’s a matter of what you want. Do you want security or do you want security and growth? It depends on how you look at it. In China, they’re monetizing the gold so you can leverage it, so you can grow your economy. It’s got safety. It’s going to create growth. Crypto has growth, and they’re trying to create safety with it. So you have the yin and the yang here going on, and the worlds are just China and the US are working together.

The world’s being split up. It’s a divorce. You get the kids, I get the furniture, you get the car, I get the house. It’s obvious. Even if they’re not working happily hand-in-hand to do this, it’s Prisoners 11. Everyone’s trying to make sure that they stay in charge. Finally, we have been writing about gold as an asset over the last several years. The most recent piece we did was on gold HQLA. That was framed very nicely by Marty Bent at TFTC in an interview there. But it was picked up by Andre, and I’m not sure how to say his name, Jing, in a video.

We shared a link with that yesterday. China using gold to replace the dollar. It’s an unlocked 20-minute piece that mirrors much of our own thesis. China’s plan to elevate gold to HQLA status for repo and infrastructure funding across Brix Nations. It’s one of the clearest, most concise summaries of the work we’ve been doing over the last three years, and well worth your time. That’s our promotion. Yeah, where were we? There’s a chat, a lot of hopes and fears lately. I’m with you guys. We’re going to add on deck. Fed Day was this week.

We’re going to talk about the fallout from that. GDP is today. I’m not sure if it’s real, and PC is supposed to be out tomorrow. Let’s talk about the markets for a second. All right. What happened yesterday? Let’s pull up gold, make it bigger. I feel like Bob Ross with a chart. There’s an hourly chart. The gold market, as you may remember yesterday morning, was extremely strong, getting as high as $4,029 and change. Silver was similarly actually stronger. It looked like the dip had been bought and the selling had resolved itself. We opined in the morning that this was related to people thinking about the Fed, maybe some shorts covered before the Fed, probably a lot of shorts covered before the Fed, and maybe some hot money, some gambling money at the casino through some bets on gold.

After that, the news came out, and we’re right in here. At 2 o’clock, the news came out, and the Fed cut by 25 basis points and indicated almost without a doubt that they will be ending QT, which is the doorway to QE, not QE, as zero as we call it. All right. The markets, silver, gold, stocks, bonds, the dollar kind of flatlined after 25 basis point cut. No rally, it makes sense considering they had rallied before. Then during the conference, one thing we did say is they’ll do to the lack of data out is the conference might be a little bit of a shocker.

Anything that said, the market may just get a little bit of goofy. What did Pals say? He said during the conference, paraphrasing, he said a December rate cut is not a given. A little bit of a hawkish push back there. Stocks fell out of bed, gold fell out of bed, silver fell out of bed. Everything dropped. Everything lost it. That’s where we are. The editorial comment about this is, let me put stocks up to show you. Let’s say gold was right there when the news came out, dropped to here and now is essentially back up there minus $20.

Stocks, same timeframe. Stocks, right. Stocks, same idea. They were on the highs. They were a little bit softer. He talks, market drops, right, like gold, works its way up like gold actually gets back to unchanged on the highs and now we’re lower again. Now, why are we lower? Maybe earnings are out. Maybe dad is out. Who knows? I don’t know. But the fact of the matter is that the fed cutting bullish for stocks and gold, boom, right. Pal throwing water on it, bearish for stocks and gold, boom, something happens last night and gold and stocks both go up and now gold is holding up 50, not 70 and stocks are retracing again.

So behaviorally, it looks like gold is being a little bit more resilient than stocks in the first 48 hours of the fed announcement. Bear in mind that gold did have a $300 sell off to get to where it is. So the prognosis for gold for us, it’s actually pretty simple and this applies to silver as well. We dropped, it’s the battle for 4,000 now. There are lots of open interest there. And I think that there are people that are hedging their gamma underneath. We think this was something like a bullion bank. That’s long options that sold up here.

And that puts some gamma down here. I’d love to say this is big buying right here. I’m not sure. We didn’t wick it. That should have been bullish. It was bullish. Fell. That should have been bearish. It wasn’t bearish. So when I flip-flop, in my own mind when I flip-flop like twice in a day, it’s like, you know what, it’s a rage. My trading might, my next position might be putting a butterfly on, you know, putting a butterfly on or condor. So for example, you would sell this call, sell that call, buy that call, buy that call, sell butterflies, sell the meat and buy the wings essentially.

But that’s it. I mean, you know, we have enough excitement. You don’t have to have an opinion right now. We are in buy season and this is that buying. This is the buying, the RA buying, the bank buying, the allocator buying, the hedge funds covered, shorts buying, and we’re in buy season and CTA’s don’t care about buy season. They’re on a calendar year. They just puke and they have puked. I personally love to see CTA’s get short, nother sell off, let them sell it in the hall like they like to do in silver.

And then we see what happens. But between now and then I’m violently neutral, as I hope and whatever you are, I hope you’re doing well. Have a great day. Well, thank you, Vincent, as always for this morning’s show and giving us all posted on the swath of things that are happening in the precious metals markets between the banks trying to hire more people to get additional business in gold and silver and even cut in on each other’s turf. And hopefully you found that helpful at home. And I’ll thank you as well for being here.

She’ll appreciate you spending part of your day at the Arcadia economics YouTube channel, learning about gold and silver. And just before we wrap up, it wants to mention one of the companies that helps make this possible each morning, which is Dolly Varden Silver. Obviously, a company that has great exposure to silver has done quite well throughout this rally. And as they mentioned, just about two weeks ago, they have completed their fifty six thousand one hundred thirty one meter drill program, which covered eighty four drill holes in their twenty twenty five Kitzel Valley exploration program.

Sean Cuncan, who you’ve seen on the show several times and who is doing a call with David Morgan that will have for you next week. He’s been really happy with it, as you can see his commentary here. Although I’d like to play a clip just of what he said after they got their best set of drill results in the history of the company as part of this program in one of the largest drill programs the project has ever seen in a single season. It’s a fifty five thousand meter drill program. And we’ve put out arguably the greatest result the property has ever seen from a grams and meters basis.

So we hit, you know, fourteen hundred grams of silver over twenty one meters at the Wolf Fane. And so we have identified a lot of silver. We’re finding a lot of silver and we’re finding it at grades that I would say are second to almost none. And we’re doing all of this in a safe jurisdiction where you have certainty with the locals, whether they’re First Nations indigenous locals or they’re the local communities they want us there. They’ve been experiencing mining operations for a hundred years. So we’ve got a high grade project. We’ve got a large project.

It’s in a safe jurisdiction. So thank you to Sean. Thank you to Dolly Varden and thank you for watching at home. Do hope your day is off to a great start and we will look forward to seeing you back here tomorrow. [tr:trw].

See more of Arcadia Economics on their Public Channel and the MPN Arcadia Economics channel.