➡ The U.S. has secured a $75 billion deal for a metal smelter in Tennessee, which will process silver and other important minerals. This is the first new U.S. Zinc smelter in over 50 years and is seen as a strategic move to regain control over refining capacity, secure Latin American supply chains, and reduce reliance on China. The deal gives the U.S. and the Pentagon direct control over silver and critical minerals processing. The rise in silver prices is not due to traders or hype, but because it’s becoming a geopolitical pressure point tied to Latin America, China, and the growing Taiwan Flashpoint.
➡ The text suggests buying when the price is above 7450, with a potential to reach 7750. It also discusses the fluctuating values of gold and silver, and how they differ in various regions like the US, China, and Europe. The author advises treating each expiration as a separate commodity due to weather influences. Lastly, the text encourages supporting independent media and reminds viewers that the information provided is not financial advice.

The United States has secured a $75 billion non-ferrous metal smelter in Clarksville, Tennessee. Department of Defense holding a 40% stake. Led by Korea Zinc, the project will process silver and 12 other critical minerals marking the first new U.S. Zinc smelter in over 50 years. Officials frame it as a strategic move to regain control over refining capacity, secure Latin American supply chains, and reduce reliance on China. 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 and this is the Golfix Market Rundown. We have three things to discuss today. The first is the U.S. secure 7.4 billion smelter for silver and other critical minerals. The U.S. has quietly locked down a 7.4 billion smelter deal, giving Washington and the Pentagon direct control over silver and critical minerals processing as supply chains harden against China. The second is an analytical piece. Silver isn’t running hot because of traders or hype. It’s because it’s becoming a geopolitical pressure valve tied to Latin America, China, and the growing Taiwan Flashpoint.

Finally, in the premium section at the bottom of this post, we will lay out a Goldman trade desk idea for gold in 2026, one of their top 10 trade ideas. It’s not something that most people can do and it is something that’s complex, but it’s worth understanding to get an idea on what people are betting, what the casinos are offering to bet, and how the mindset of the market is evolving going forward. We have that at the bottom and we’ll go through it later on today in the PM Golfix. There’s the homepage.

Here are the markets. 10-year yields are down 3. The dollar is up 19. The SP500 is up 23. The NASDAQ is up 113. The VIX is up 61. Gold 4414, up 83 off its highs. Silver, $74.97, up $2.17 off its highs. Copper up 16 cents, almost 3%. WTI up 42, despite all the bearish news out of the Venezuela oil. Natural gas down 19. Markets are really wippy today, I mean in all kinds of directions. Just a quick analysis. Simply put, if you’re looking at gold, what did the arrest of Maduro do? It increased uncertainty in the world.

It added a layer of uncertainty. Will China de-dollarize faster or will they capitulate? Will Chinese trade partners say, well, you didn’t have our back, why should we stay with you? It creates uncertainty and uncertainty means you buy gold. It doesn’t matter where you are, you buy gold. Silver is a little bit different story, but it’s completely related. I believe that the silver rally has another leg under it now because of the smelter deal, which we’re going to cover in a little bit. That’s in the top left-hand side. What that means, just to give you the sense, the US is reshoring, onshoring, and French-shoring supply chains.

That means China will not have the access, the rest of the world will not have the access to Latin American natural resources. That means that we are on a path to eventually putting metals in a 232 tire situation. I’m not saying that’s happening tomorrow, but what it ultimately means is the US controls global pricing. Yes, it’s weakened, but the US controls global pricing. If we say we want something and we’re going to pay higher for it, well, you’ve got to pay higher than us if you want it. We own the printing press, so we can’t print silver, but we can print the money that buys silver, and that’s going to keep driving prices up.

That’s the geopolitical metric going on right now. That’s what I think anyway, and it goes for all metals. The smelter is an example of that. Our ask, buy a hat, please, and support independent media, MAUGA, make gold-grade again, and make silver-grade again with a gold-fix logo attached. The first story, the United States has secured a $75 billion non-ferrous metal smelter in Clarksville, Tennessee, Department of Defense holding a 40% stake, Department of War, depending on how you look at it. Led by Korea Zinc, the project will process silver and 12 other critical minerals, marking the first new US Zinc smelter in over 50 years.

Officials frame it as a strategic move to regain control over refining capacity, secure Latin American supply chains, and reduce reliance on China. It’s a big deal. It’s a big deal. Considering that two years ago, we didn’t want to do anything. These are polluters. It’s a big deal to use national security to say climate change, not that interested right now, interested in being around in the next 50 years. There’s all kinds of knock-off implications for that. The Swiss are probably watching us saying, oh, shit, we better get our act together. That’s that story.

The other story, which is more of a breakdown in analytics that we put out before we did this story, is silver’s recent price behavior is signaling geopolitical stress, not speculation. We’ve shown charts to that effect. There are no longs in this market at the fund level, no significant longs. As US-China rivalry intensifies, contested Latin America supply chains, diplomatic alignment at the United Nations, and Taiwan’s status are converging into a single strategic fault line. China’s hardened policy towards Latin America and its push for political alignment mirrors a proven playbook used elsewhere to secure institutional support, like in Africa.

Silver sits at the center of this shift as both a critical industrial output and a strategic mineral, with markets registering supply chain control risks before governments formally acknowledge them. If you think that I’m making too much of this about silver, I’m not. It’s geopolitics, and silver is the point of a sphere. It’s not the most important. It’s not the most crucial, but it is the highest beta commodity, and it reacts to things because it is a discontinuously liquid market. It’s big, but it’s chunky. It doesn’t happen all at once. Contracts are larval.

If you’re trading metals and you understand metals, you’re trading geopolitics. Oil traders should be all over this shit instead of putting it down. It’s part of their business. Where was I? Yeah, so there you go. That’s that story. Moving on. News analysis, geopolitics, China after Venezuela, a fresh checklist. After the US stepped into Venezuela, we put together a old style Strat4 type of piece. It was a map of unknowns and knowns. We tried to quantify the potential risks and changes. One of the things we said was, actually the main point that we said all the other stuff aside was this.

The US going into Venezuela in what’s called a proximity protection gives license to China to do the same thing with Taiwan. Now, if you’ve been reading or watching what we’ve been saying here, these things are extremely late. The US put out national security strategy. Within a week, China put out its Latin American strategy, which heavily mentioned Taiwan. Then we went into Venezuela and just arrested Maduro. Bang, bang, bang, we’re talking about serious cause and effect here. This being done, cynically speaking, it seems to me that the US has no real legal ground or recourse to stop China if they were to go into Taiwan.

Now, I’m not implying they will. There’s all kinds of calculus and risks to that. If China does that, Japan just might freak out in an aggressive way. China does that and the US can defend on the grounds of humanitarian. Taiwan’s a different economic culture completely than China. China says Taiwan’s part of China and the US says, well, economically, we’re not so sure about that, that we want them to be part of you, at least not until we get our semiconductor supply chain completely solidified. The point is what the US did in Latin America, a neighboring country that it didn’t like the leader and it had a reason, narco-terrorism, but it’s a reason they’ve had for years, they just decided to do it now because it is convenient.

That gives latitude to China. Why am I making a big deal out of this? Because on Sunday, Bloomberg put out a big story on how it does that. We’re happy to have been joined by such pedigree as Bloomberg. Anyway, moving on. Down on deck this week is jobs and unemployment data. You can see the rest of them there. The Goldman trade desk says there’s more upside, whoops, don’t want you to see that. More upside in gold in 2026. We will break this trade idea down on its merits in the gold fix PM analysis.

Let’s go to the charts for a second. I want to start with silver because I put something in the chat last night or early this morning. That’s a four-hour chart. Using poly as a guide, it’ll pop up in a second, I think, essentially above 7450, call it. Once we broke through that, I said if we hold above 7450, then we should go to 7750. Now, looking at this chart in isolation, this is the pullback that you would buy if you were bullish. If we go below 7450, you would get out and assume that we go to potentially down to 71 and change if we break below there for any meaningful time frame.

That’s what I said last night. You want to be long above 7450, especially if you get a good entry, assuming that you can get as high as 7750. 77 is happy. I’d be happy enough with that. Then I looked at gold this morning. Again, staying with the polymetrics. Gold says we’re done on the upside. If gold breaks 4,396 and silver is below that 7450 area, you might want to say we’re done for the day. You might want to say we’re done for the day. I don’t know. I don’t feel strongly about it, but I’m just trying to give you some mindset not to think about this.

Obviously, we’re in bull markets, but look at the gold chart there. What’s the 2% rule? Gold was up 2%. Gold is up 2.3%. Now it’s up 1.7%. There’s a war. China is buying and we’re tamping. China is buying and maybe China is selling during our hours. Who the hell knows? The only good advice, the only really, really solid advice I can give you is the advice that I if you’re trading natural gas and you’re trading different months, they’re not the same commodity. You’ve got summer and winter. I would say this to you using that concept that each expiration is a different commodity.

Don’t look at them as related to each other. There’s no correlation right now because of weather. I want you to look at that rule and apply it to gold. Gold in the US is not gold in China. Gold in China is not gold in Europe. These are three different commodities. Either you’re day trading in your time zone or you have a much longer time frame which I think many of my subscribers do. The Goldman trade idea is at bottom in the premium section and we would ask you again to support independent media and please buy a hat, M-A-U-G-A, M-A-G-G-A.

Make gold and make silver great again. Have a great day on this. Well, thanks for watching this morning’s Markets and Metals with Vince Lancy. 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 license 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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