➡ The London gold bar standard is losing its importance due to a lack of readily available gold, damaging its reputation. Meanwhile, there are opportunities arising from changes in tax policies and depreciation under different administrations. Gold remains a stable investment, with signs of bullishness, while cryptocurrencies like Bitcoin and Ethereum are showing strength and behaving more like commodities. This information is not financial advice, but for informational purposes only.

Russia, the world’s second-largest gold producer, will begin trading physical gold on the St. Petersburg International Mercantile Exchange. Bimex by year-end in a strategic move to establish domestic price benchmarks and reduce reliance on the London’s LBMA billion benchmark. 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. It’s Monday morning on Vince Lancey. It’s 7.21. And we have a bunch of stories to go through. We’re going to touch on two of them.

And we’ll just give you an overview of the rest on the screen. Top left-hand side is Hartnett. Long gold as an anarchy hedge. This is primarily about bonds, but in his B.I.G. thesis, own bonds, own international stocks, and own gold. Well, he’s not saying to own bonds anymore. He’s also not saying to own stocks in general anymore. And that leaves the G, which is gold. Top right-hand side, G.O. Powell Mineral Awards. That’s an impromptu eight- or nine-minute podcast we did, trying to tie together for everyone the implications of things that were said by people like Josh Fair at Scottsdale.

People like myself with regards to the mercantilism factor. And all the news items that have been out there regarding the protectionism of minerals and what it really means. Gold intrinsic value in how not to be a turkey. Great title, not my title. Great title. How not to be a turkey refers to everyone believes in fiat until it’s too late. So the 1,000 day plus one turkey would be when fiat collapses. And it’ll happen. Asia, I’m sorry, Russia. Lower left-hand side, Russia launches gold contract, takes on LBMA benchmark. That was a news item.

And we’re going to go through that. And the lower right-hand side, Standard Trotter is talking gold and it’s bullish. A rather benign analysis by Standard Trotter with big implications. So let’s start with the markets. We’ll throw some charts up there while we’re doing that. 10-year-olds are down almost five. The dollar is $9,804, down 40. The downtrend resumes. Okay, S&P 500 is up 15, 6312. The VIX is 1689, up 49. Gold is 33, 73, 74. Very active on the highs of the evening, I think, 24. Silver at 3849, up 35. For my taste, disappointing compared to gold.

But who’s going to be? I’m not sad about it. Copper, 557, up almost 6 cents. That’s a lot. WTI, 67, 14, down 10 natural gas. Massive down 5%, down 17. Bitcoin, 118K, finally moving up a little bit in comparison to its younger brother, Ethereum, which is up another 1.5% at 3820. Platinum, platinum, leading everything. It’s like buy all the things. Start with the white metals and then just buy everything else. Palladium, up 14, 1269. Platinum, up 19, up 20. Gold is like the big mama that’s calling everyone higher now. That’s what’s going on.

You can’t have Palladium go to platinum, go to 1400 without Palladium catching up. Palladium is going to be the bigger beneficiary of EVs being put on the side. Anyway, I’m not telling you to go out and buy it. I’m just telling you, all the metals have a relationship under God, in Earth, and in industrial use, and they’re all going to rise as long as gold stays up here. Gold’s of ratio down a little bit. Grain’s mixed with wheat, the weakest. I’m sorry, wheat, the only strong market. First story, standard charter talking gold, and it is bullish.

Now, we’re going to add a rabbit hole in this post here. It’s actually a very simple analysis. We like gold because of this, this, and this, but we’re going to throw a layer of a rabbit hole here for you. So what is this? What was that report? It’s a nicely put retail piece extolling the virtues of gold aimed at English-speaking investors with little exposure to gold published by standard charter. Why is this piece significant other than the really nice graphics they have? SC is an older bullion bank that has largely changed focus over the years, modernized is the word.

Currently, they are very crypto and stablecoin focused. The bank is also extremely well positioned in the emerging Hong Kong stablecoin ecosystem. I read it, we shared the analysis, and I had a quick talk with Eric Young about that. Hong Kong is really just ramping up to be the portal for gold into the east. Anyway, that was three weeks ago. Now, standard charter is talking about gold once again to retail clients in an introductory way. Maybe it’s nothing, but this is the rabbit hole. A little while back, another bank HSBC in 2024 developed a regulated tokenized fractional ownership product for physical gold in Hong Kong.

It’s fully backed by allocated bars, accessible via digital banking, and protected through advanced ledger tech and emerging quantum security. Anyway, the banks in China are preparing for a tsunami of gold demand at the retail level. This is how they intend to capture it in combination with China, savings accounts that can buy gold directly, insurance products to put people into gold as opposed to bonds, and nationalistic monetary policies, which are at the root of the dollarization in these countries at the grassroots level. Top down, it’s pretty obvious. We don’t want our wealth confiscated.

Bottom up, it’s like, hey, the dollar is not good for us anymore. Buy locally, buy your own money. That’s the first story, and that full analysis is in the premium post standard charter talking gold, and it is bullish. Next story, a news item, right? Russia launches a gold track, takes on the LBMA benchmark. Those are our words. I mean, there are words, but we’re not the only ones saying that. Russia, the world’s second largest gold producer, will begin trading physical gold on the St. Petersburg International Mercantile Exchange. The SPIMEX, or SPY-MEX, by year end in a strategic move to establish domestic price benchmarks and reduce reliance on the London’s LBMA billion benchmark.

The shift is part of a broader strategy led, I’m sorry, strategy to assert economic sovereignty. The launch of domestic gold trading follows Moscow’s 2023 creation of the Institute of Oil and Gas Initiatives, a parallel to the US-based API Institute. In both cases, Russia is challenging Western control over pricing infrastructure for critical commodities. Russia’s move also has geopolitical implications. By using SPIMEX, SPIMEX, the country is building an alternative to Western clearinghouses, which in recent years have demonstrated a willingness to free sovereign assets. Swift is viewed as a Western clearinghouse in this concept. Unlike the UK and US, which house substantial foreign gold, but often restrict its movement, Russia stores its reserves domestically.

The full analysis is in the gold fix newswire post called Russia launches a gold contract, takes on LBMA benchmark. Now, there’s a couple concepts I want to touch on here that have come up in the comments in a couple of posts that I did about the gold being mined locally and sold to central banks locally. Those comments were related to the CNBC concept that well, if you mine the gold locally, you want to have it in a central bank, you still have to add an extra refining process to make it LBMA, a London good delivery, LGD, I think it’s called a London good bars.

And so there are specs, there are global specs, right, that must be uniform for the commodity to be fungible back and forth. And that’s all valid. The CNBC comment, pushback against they’re wasting their time anyway, only makes sense if they expect the gold to go to London, only makes sense that they expect the gold to be sold in the West. It’s not going to be. They seek sovereignty over their own goal, over their own money. And part of that, as something we’ve discussed here before is, once a supply chains have migrated and you control your own supply chains, you need to get the payment chains organized.

And part of the payment chain is pricing. Our exchange has it. Another part of the payment chain with regards to gold is standards. This is something that’s more obvious in natural gas, where you have to have a standard that’s globally accepted. The East, from these moves, is saying we don’t care about your standards. We have standards that are just as good and we have half the business. So you keep your London gold bar standard and we’ll have our Shanghai standard. Look it up, over the last five years, refineries have been going up in Saudi Arabia and they’re creating standards for bars over there.

It’s not to say they can’t make London gold bullion standards. They can, they just have to be certified and they are certified. The point is, when you’re trying, not when you’re trying, when you seek possession and control over your asset, you do what I describe, but when you seek to have it come out and have everyone be able to use it, you compete on pricing. That’s the exchange. You compete on standards and that’s creating your own set of standards and you create a brand. You create a reputation. It’s not London gold standard.

Who cares? We’re not going to London and if we have our own refiners, we could make our own standard here, which is already accepted by, that’s where the gold is. Like the bricks have the gold. The bricks are buying the gold. Their standard matters. Yeah, sure. London gold bars are, London gold bar standard is not going away, but if the LBMA is shrinking in importance and the LBMA is shrinking in importance because they don’t have gold that’s readily available, then their brand is damaged. If their brand is damaged, who’s to say that their standards are not up to standard? Let’s assume that they are, of course they are, right? Of course, I can’t believe I’m saying that, but of course they are, but we don’t need your refiners.

We don’t need your pricing. We have our own. This is the kickball being taken home. The plant that makes the kickballs is taken home. The plant that standardizes the kickballs is taken home. It’s like separate but equal and that’s what the West has done by violating a trust. Anyway, that story, I think as mentioned already is in the Goldfix Newswire. Moving on, related posts over the weekend, founders, the next equity thing is here. We feel very strongly about that and under Biden, there were rules and acts that were passed, the IRA being one of them that had very focused, beneficial tax policies towards chips.

Under Trump, there’s a different vibe going on and it has to do with depreciation. There’s a lot of other things going on, but the one that is identifiable is depreciation and it’s going to create a lot of opportunity, I think. Right now, there’s a lot of opportunity. Part of that long gold is an anarchy hedge. I mentioned what that is, gold intrinsic value, how not to be a turkey. WGC gold mid-year outlook, interesting in that they’re not throwing water on gold anymore. It’s almost like the LBMA is exerting less influence over them.

That’s how it works. Data on deck. Powell speaks this week. There’s something going on about a leak and the Powell-Trump thing. It’s hitting the tapes right now. There’s a lot of data this week, but I wouldn’t say it’s critical. Market check. Things are pretty much where we left them. Just touch on gold. See the top right-hand side there? It’s still in the range. The founders discussion that we had over the weekend, the CFTC discussion, we saw signs of bullishness. We’re not married to it, but if you’re looking for a reason, when the 50-day moving average turns up, you would get long on a breakout above recent highs.

Right now, it’s recent highs. That’s gold. Lower right-hand side, silver. See the Bollinger Bantra. For those of you that follow or watch that stuff that I do, notice fourth, fifth day, the momentum stopped, but the trend continues. It’s a different kind of trade now. Bitcoin and Ethereum are strong. Interesting that they’re tracking metals or metals are tracking them. Interesting that crypto, for different reasons, is behaving like a commodity or a dollar hedge and less like a tech stock. Anyway, that’s it. I’m Vince. Well, thanks for watching this morning’s Markets and Metals with Vince Lancey.

We sure appreciate you tuning in and starting your day with us here. Hope you enjoyed the show and we’ll see you again tomorrow. Please note that this video is not intended as legal licensed financial trading advice and is to be used for informational purposes only. Please contact your financial advisor before making any decisions and thanks for watching. [tr:trw].

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