➡ Italy is taking back control of its gold from the European Central Bank, which could have significant implications for Europe’s financial stability. Meanwhile, the Federal Reserve is expected to cut interest rates, which could impact the silver market. In other news, Dolly Varden Silver is merging with Kintago ORE to create a new mid-tier silver and gold producer in North America.

Silver surged above 60 an ounce for the first time after more than doubling this year as years of undersupply met booming industrial and investor demand. Production remains constrained because most silver is mined as a by-product limiting supply response. Tower of Concerns have driven stockpiling in the U.S., draining metal from other regions despite elevating COMEX inventories. 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. I’m Vince Lancey. This is an all-fix market rundown.

We have two stories today to touch on. First, silver has broken through 60 yesterday and 61 last night for the first time as a multi-year supply deficit surging industrial demand, entire fears and retail speculation, such as it is, collide into a full-scale, physical, slow-moving squeeze. Second, we want to talk about Russia. Russia may be preparing to pull a page from its palladium playbook over the years. And if it succeeds, a 2026 export ban could, will probably, quietly remove a major source of global buoyant supply. Tightening physical markets just as BRICS nations reposition gold as a strategic collateral asset.

But let’s start with the markets. There’s the whole page. We’re talking about those stories. Ten-year yields are unchanged. The dollar is down 12, almost 13. The S&P 500 is down 2.5 handles. NASDAQ is down 22. The VIX is up 45 basis points. Gold is down 10, 11. Silver is up 33. Copper is up 6. WTI is up 11. Natural gas is down 7. Bitcoin down 680. Ethereum unchanged, basically. Platinum, palladium both down, down 18 and down 27. I’m sorry, palladium and platinum both down, down 20 and down 28 now. Gold, silver under 70, trading 68, 75 right now.

Soy corner wheat, down, down and down, pretty equally with wheat taking a little bit more of the chin. Okay, so you’re looking at that board and you’re saying, what the hell’s going on? Well, nothing happens in a straight line, but you’re going to see it happening in fits and starts. So there are still people selling gold and buying silver. That’s mechanical carry trades being unwound. Copper was bought. Maybe there’s just not as much selling of copper yesterday. It did get a drumming. And so there might be some value buyers, value shoppers out there. Today is Fed Day and we’ll discuss that in the context of Silver’s rally near the end of the program.

First story, silver surged above 60 and outs for the first time after more than doubling this year, as years of under supply met booming industrial and investor demand. Production remains constrained because most silver is mined as a byproduct limiting supply response. Tower of concerns have driven stockpiling in the US, draining metal from other regions, despite elevated COMEX inventories. With silver now labeled a US critical mineral and possibly tariffs ahead, analysts say regional tightness is likely to persist. Now, if you hear that story from me and you said it doesn’t sound like something this would say, well, that is not something I would say.

It’s all true, but it’s all things that we know. That is my reading and breakdown strictly without putting an opinion on an FT post. That’s an FT type of take on the silver market. The fact of the matter is the silver, now I’ll give you the editorial comment, the silver that’s going into the COMEX fault, not despite because of that silver going into the COMEX fault. That silver is not leaving again. That’s hoarding and China’s silver. They were emptying it and now it’s refilling. So despite silver going into China, now it’s because silver going into China, London is being triaged and they’re fighting for the lives right now.

So there’s plenty of silver to put it in their terminology, but it’s not where it’s supposed to be. And so it’s not getting pushed. It’s getting pulled and that makes prices go up. That’s demand and we have a big shortfall. There’s more to it than that, but that’s it for now. That continues in the post. We did not email that yet and we sent another one out. That continues in the post silver break 61 on London lease rate rise. Now the London lease rate rise part, that’s us. FT’s not talking about that. Bloomberg’s not talking about that.

We are. And one of our founders had a nice chart for us to include. And that’s in the premium section of that report. So enjoy. Silver’s up because lease rates are going up again. Next, this is where the puck’s going to be. Russia is proposing a 2026 ban on exporting refined gold bars, building on its existing scrap export restrictions from last year, designed to curb capital flight and retain strategic resources. No decree is finalized, but officials confirm the policy direction. If enacted, Russian mine output would be redirected towards domestic reserves and collateral channels instead of global markets.

When combined with similar supply retention actions across China and Asia, the move echoes Moscow’s early 2000s palladium squeeze and points towards higher global physical buoyant availability ahead or tighter global physical buoyant availability ahead. Now, what we did was soon as we saw that they were here’s the bottom line. Last year, they said we’re going to restrict scrap gold from being sent out. And they also in the past six months stopped selling their own central bank gold publicly and they stopped doing that. That was that’s an important side. We covered that in detail.

That was a breakdown of a soft gen analysis. And we covered that in detail, noting that for the last two years since the war had started, for the last two and a half years since the war had started, Ukraine war, Russia would circumvent tariffs, I mean, sorry, sanctions by selling its gold to a former Soviet country, Armenia, Kazakhstan, and Uzbekistan, I think, or Azerbaijan. I’m not sure, but one of those, I have three, I have those three countries somewhere, one of the stands, and those countries would then liquidate it in London. So you had selling coming from Russia to satellite countries and those satellite countries were liquidates.

That’s the workaround, right? It’s like the oil thing that India is doing. And that was consistent with financing the war. However, this year, they’ve stopped doing that. So is that because they don’t have any more gold? No. Is that because they don’t need any more money? Well, maybe, maybe they need less money or maybe they have China giving it to them for the gold straight up. I’ll tell you what it probably has to do with. The BRICS are collateralizing gold. And every nation that’s important in the BRICS is telling their people to buy gold.

China have a gold savings account. Russia is now telling its people to buy gold. Russia owns gold through its people as well. And India, their people already own all the gold that they could own, I think. Now they’re trying to get them to buy more silver. The point is, Russia, here’s the key part. You’re not going to get anywhere else. We lived through the palladium squeeze, mostly as witnesses. But again, very instrumental in our education and how good of a trader Putin is. Putin squeezes palladium. He squeezed it to death in 1999, 2001. He made Ford lock in a billion dollar loss on their own palladium risk, which is ridiculous.

And they’ve done it natural gas from time to time to Europe over the decades. So we highly recommend that if you’re interested in where the puck’s going to be, if you give Russia a chance, they’re going to, not squeeze, you can’t squeeze gold. They’re going to make people in the West cry on gold and raise their floor and buy gold a little bit more aggressively. Anyway, so full explanation of what they did and how they did it going back in 1999 to 2000 and their policy since then. As a student of markets, that was important to me to learn.

Okay, next story. We sent this out this morning. ECB warns Italy to reconsider gold recall. At a Frankfurt, the European Central Bank has renewed its request for Italy to reconsider proposed legislation declaring the nation’s gold reserves, the property of its citizens. Warning, the measure could interfere with the central bank’s operational independence and potentially open it door to political influence over blind holdings. Okay, bullshit. We said it was bullshit. The moment we saw the very first Reuters blurb on it, it’s bullshit. And I’ll say it again here for you. When the ECB realized that they needed to make sure they could centralize the FX behavior and gold activity of the other central banks, it passed, this is post-Grexit, it passed a ruling or a law or some sort of a whatever, whatever they call those things, idea that they restricted all the other central banks in Europe’s ability to buy, sell or hedge gold and buy, sell or hedge currencies more than a certain amount.

Now, in doing that, they were centralizing gold, which is not a bad idea if you’re going to make your economy one economy. Now, I’m not saying I would do that, but I’m saying that’s what you would do in that position and you just got over a Grexit crisis. And by the way, this was all part of Basel III. They had to get all this done before Basel III. And so most of the central banks outside of the US keep their gold in their central bank, theoretically, or probably actually. And so the central bank has the gold.

Now, the European central bank says, we control the gold. It’s your gold. We’re not saying it’s not your gold, but we control it. You can’t buy or sell it unless we say X, Y, and Z. And now Italy is saying, no, no, no, that’s our gold. And in case you’re not sure of it, we’re going to literally take it back on our balance sheet from our own central bank. So our gold is not in your pool gold that you’re using. Why is this extremely significant? Extremely significant. Because after Grexit, just like the IMF does, the ECB went around to countries with central banks like Italy and said, your liability to us is X amount of dollars, or X amount of euros, whatever they use.

So we’re going to put a collateral claim on X amount of gold that you have. And so what you’ll find now, and this is a hot tip to Scott, a founder, that if you look at the liabilities that Italy has to the ECB for whatever their debt is, well, you’re going to find out that the liabilities to the ECB match the gold controlled by the ECB. So what is Italy doing? Italy saying, you can’t use our gold for collateral anymore. It’s our gold that was voluntary and we’re not volunteering it anymore. So the autonomy of the Italian central bank is horseshit.

It’s about centralizing control of gold in Europe. If these guys don’t get their shit together, fiscally, get a united fiscal policy, Europe’s done. It’s already, I mean, it’s already done with the other stuff going on there. Anyway, so Italy is like, you know, the new Germany, ironically, right? Okay, so those are the stories and there’s the other stories. There’s a lot of news coming out. So we have to cover that. And in case you missed it, TD’s golly says, silver squeezes done, platinum pump next, that may be delayed, but certainly something worth reading.

And going into the day, today’s Fed Day. Okay, so starting with Fed Day and working backwards. If you’re a trader, Fed Day is two trading sessions before 2pm and after 2pm. Look at it, it’s two days. So what’s happening before is not necessarily what’s going to happen after. What’s happening before will continue after. What’s happening before won’t necessarily reverse after. What’s happening before is different from what’s happening after. The Fed is expected to cut 25 basis points. Yesterday was a day where markets in general raised their, I’m sorry, decreased their expectations of further cuts. Zero had reported that or noted that anyway, I should say.

But silver went up. So that just tells you silver is not about economics right now. It’s the economics of silver that matter. So how does this relate to yesterday’s behavior in markets? Silver was the easiest one to say. See, silver, I’ll start last night during Asian hours, two nights ago, and then bring it around to right now. So Sunday night, Asia opened, I’m sorry, Monday night, Monday night, Asia opened and sold. And that was Shanghai speculators at CTAs getting short or selling. At 4 a.m., when London was deep, Shanghai bought silver, physical silver. So that translated into the rally that we saw in the U.S.

when it ran into ETF buying. So you got ETF buying, Shanghai selling, and Shanghai buying during London. Last night, right, with silver on the highs, you got Shanghai buying, which is why silver went up, and you’ve got London. I don’t know what happened in London. I don’t really have a good feel for that at 4 a.m. But now you’re running into US ETF buying. So what are you looking at? You’re looking at people, you’re running into three time zones, and all three time zones have a reason to buy. And if they buy, if two of them buy at the same time, we go up.

So here we are above $61. It is not, look, I love saying silver squeezes, just like the next guy. It is not a short squeeze. You have no idea what a short squeeze is. I’ve never been in a real bonafide short squeeze. I mean, I’ve been in it, but it only lasted for five minutes. The London short squeeze, where the LME, London Metal Exchange, Nickel, doubles or triples inside of a couple days, that’s a capitulation. A short squeeze ends with a capitulation. So far, there is no capitulation. There’s a comfort in rolling, and that’s reflected in the lease rates.

The lease rates were spiking. They went down, and now they’re going like this now. The whole floor on lease rates is being raised. And so I think, God willing, there won’t be a short squeeze. There will be a chronic, painful backwardation, like what happened in Palladium in the Os and Twenties. Constant pain for people who don’t want to default, but don’t have the metal. I know Vince, have a great day. Oh, wait, I’ll just put this up to give you a chart. Oh, yeah, I should focus on this a little bit for the technical guys in the chat.

Okay, think of it this way, whatever your technical chart method is, that’s fine. But think of this. Yesterday, here’s the run up at 10 a.m., right? So that’s the trend day higher starting. And when it gets above 60, first time up to 60, well, I was looking at a 15-minute chart when this was going down. The 15-minute chart, it kept hitting 60 and bouncing down and coming off. And then it pierced it, searched for selling. There was no selling, maybe a little bit of selling. And then it took off again. This buying here, I promise you, that buying is hot money.

That’s Fed money. That’s FOMC money. That’s momentum money. Oh, it’s above 60. Let’s buy some. That’s CTA money. This is physical. This is physical demand. This is physical demand coming home to roost. This is CTA money. And this is, oh, so there you go. We did have selling. We had selling out of London at 3 a.m. Okay, so that means Shanghai didn’t buy. Shanghai physical didn’t buy. So now you have Shanghai futures traders, all the guys that sold on the other night, they’re covering shorts now. And then in London, you had no activity by China.

And now you have ETF demand coming in. So the market’s got a mind of its own right now. How do you look at that? Well, I would say if the FOMC comes out and it’s bearish for silver, we can go back to $60. I don’t give a shit, right? If it’s bullish for silver, I have no idea. But you can go to wherever it goes. It’s just it’s going to be ETF buying that comes in. It’ll be American ETF buying, more CTA buying. If the only thing I’m worried about is if the fed hike, I’m sorry, cut, is a hawkish cut, the rhetoric that comes out of it, then you could see the market crack 60.

60 is important to me because if it hits 60 from all those guys, those idiots puking, let them puke. If there’s real physical buying there again, that means the floor is ratcheting up and the physical guys are getting more and more nervous and it’ll be a perpetual short squeeze. See you later. Well, thank you, Vincent, as always for this morning’s show and such an exciting time and year in the gold and silver markets. Amazing to think that we’re wrapping up 2025. And soon enough, we’ll find out what 2026 has in store for the gold and silver markets as President Donald Trump jams his interest-cutting choice into the Federal Reserve.

Deficits continue to soar, bricks continue to de-dollarize and who knows what else will happen next year, but we will be here with you. And fortunately, along with that, another company that has been here with us, who is Dolly Varden Silver, actually had some news out on Monday as they have entered into a merger with Kintago ORE for what will be a new North American high-grade mid-tier silver gold producer and developer. One of the highlights of the deal is that Kintago already has the Mancho Mine in Alaska, which is a producing mine that had total cash distributions for the first nine months of 2025 of $87 million, which will really also allow them to grow the company because in addition to Dolly Varden’s Kitsil Valley project, Kintango also has the Lucky Shot and Johnson Tracked mines in Alaska, and the combined entity is what they are expecting to be a new North American high-grade mid-tier silver gold producer and developer.

I will be talking with Sean Kunken of Dolly Varden Silver later this week to get some more insight into his thoughts on the deal, but just wanted to pass that along. Make sure you were aware of the news and find out a little bit more about the progress of Dolly Varden’s drill campaign this year leading up to this deal while that video is coming your way now. [tr:trw].

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