Now, in one sense, we’ve heard rumblings of this throughout the past year. And banks moving operations over to the east. And when you think about what’s happening in the world where the east continuing their move away from the dollar, the whole de-dollarization thing, not just something that they talk about anymore. But we’ve seen that happen. We’ve seen the flows of gold go to the east. We’ve seen central banks setting records for the amount of gold that they’ve been purchasing. And along with that, in addition to Hong Kong, we see Singapore is trying to become a regional gold hub by working with local and international banks to boost liquidity and meet demand from wealthy investors.

And they’ve been having meetings with lenders to assess the potential of the city-state as a physical trading hub. And here you can see they mention how Hong Kong has long competed with Singapore to attract liquidity. Although, what is interesting here is that in addition to Singapore actively working with key gold market participants to look at ways to support the growth of the gold market there, they’re also assessing industry demand for a new gold contract, according to people familiar with the matter. So again, this is what, you know, it happens in stages.

But first, some business goes over there. Then we see pricing power shift away from New York. And perhaps the best example of that is that if you look at today’s silver price, $83.70 is the futures in New York. Although, the Shanghai exchange was up at $96 when they closed India up between $88 and $89. So we’re already seeing pricing power shift here. And I would maintain my belief that the main reason we’re seeing the different prices in different areas of the globe, especially on the silver side, is because of the physical tightness and the fact that we’ve been running deficits, eating through inventory stockpiles, and that’s continued eventually that adds up.

So gold, a little bit of a different story where we don’t have that deficit, but you still see a lot of the gold demand coming from the east as they recognize the problems with the US balance sheet in the west and are, I don’t know if it’s the right word, but effectively front-running the US bond investors out of, you want to talk about the real crowded trade. It’s a 40-year bond bull market that does not match the condition of the balance sheets that are underlying these bond markets. And in other cases, that’s why you continue to see China in particular looking to gold, and you see a lot of the activity going to the east, and now the banks are even helping Singapore to push their regional gold hub ambitions.

And my strong belief is that this is probably not the last that we will hear about infrastructure shifting east, especially as we see a lot of metal on the move lately. Quick look over at the COMEX, where you can see continues to come out. We’re now down to 355 million ounces, and here is from Pug Pack on the substack who keeps track of this data, which is really handy, and thank you to him. Here you can see back on January 26, 415, 411, 408, 405. I mean, it’s really coming out two to four million ounces a day.

There was five million coming out on the 10th, but just continues to go lower. Again, still high, historically speaking, although quite a sharp drop. We have not seen that yet in the history of the COMEX, and obviously when you look at the Chinese inventories and see what’s happening there, where you have the higher premiums, and you also have repeated reports of tightness and problems with the Chinese supply, which I think this chart makes quite clear. These things, like the premium, they’re not complete accidents, and by the way, hit that subscribe button and the notification bell, and we will keep you posted as this develops.

We’ll see how much more metal comes out of the COMEX, but it really picked up when the LBMA got popped last October, and that’s the same time where you started seeing metal come out of the COMEX, then accelerating into 2026. Of course, that’s all happening at the same time that things are not looking good with what I’m reading so far in Iran. I am not in Iran. My prayers go out to the people in Iran, the people in any of these countries that often feel a lot differently than the governments, but here you see that the Iranian regime is paying for their crimes against America in blood.

I’m not sure what crimes Iran committed against America. I did read quite a bit about the overthrow of Mohammad Mosaddegh in, I believe, 1953 by the CIA and the British, but anyway, it does not sound like it’s going well, and they’re saying paying for these crimes in blood and reading reports of perhaps protracted regime change. And while I’m not defending the record of any foreign political leaders, the US did just go in and kill a foreign leader in another country, so there’s just, let’s say, we’re not reducing the uncertainty in the gold and silver markets.

In response, Iran has vowed to attack any ship trying to pass through the Strait of Hormuz, and we’ve already seen Scott Fesson. He was talking earlier about some of the plans of what the US is going to do to support the oil market, but either case, not a good situation, and while there certainly has been a lot of volatility in the gold and silver prices over the last few days, just the fact that these things are happening, the uncertainty plus, from a gold and silver standpoint, never good for the US balance sheet to see another conflict going, and that’s part of the reason why even though you’ve had, what was it, down $200 bucks yesterday at some point this week, here you still look at the gold price well back over $5,100 with the futures at $5,140, so perhaps some heavy things going on in the world, but the precious metals price is being supported as we wrap up here at $215 eastern.

We see $8,353 in the silver futures, again over $96 in China, gold futures at $5,141, and certainly one of the questions that comes up a lot is that, well, if the gold and silver prices go higher, or in some cases stay where they are, that’s one of the reasons why some investors look to the mining stocks for leverage, and I would just like to thank one of our sponsors, Dolly Varden, who brought us today’s show, where during the rally, and actually even prior to that, Sean Kunken, their CEO, believed that we would see the environment that we’re in now, and they rather aggressively were expanding their ounces under control, and their land packages, and have recently done a deal with Contango ORE to enhance their liquidity and cash flow position as they develop these projects, and let’s take a quick listen to a comment from Sean during the last interview I did with him.

The results that we put out were on a gram meter basis, like 200 gram meters on a gold basis, which is two times what you want to see, so it’s 200% greater than economic geologists want to see to say, hey, this is a discovery, this is economic. So we’ve consistently found high grade gold and silver, and these results just reiterate expansion potential, and confirm a very, very, very high grade system. Well, thank you, Sean, and thank you to everyone at home watching. Sure hope you found this one helpful. Leave a comment below before you go, and just in case you were a little unnerved by the sell-off that we saw yesterday, and how to take some of the emotion out of it from time to time, and leave yourself with a plan in place so that, especially if you’re expecting more volatility like that in the weeks and months ahead, that you can handle that like a champ and be prepared.

Well, to find out more, just click on the video coming your way now!
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