➡ Texas has introduced its own gold and silver bullion coins and collectible notes, which are not legal tender but are meant for investment. These items will be sold through national retailers and the Texas government website. The move is seen as a way to raise awareness of gold as an investment, increase accessibility, and strengthen the state’s financial ecosystem. The initiative also reflects a trend towards regional resilience as global systems become more complex.
➡ The gold market is experiencing high volatility with large price ranges becoming the norm. However, the market is currently stable, and it’s suggested to watch the dollar during US hours for signs of market increase. Fortuna Mining, a company with exposure to the gold rally, is planning a construction decision for their Diambasu gold project in Senegal, which has shown a high return rate. The company’s CEO, Jorge Ginoza, is confident about the project’s robust economics and anticipates a positive investment decision by mid-year.

Texas officials announced the launch of state-branded 1-ounce gold and silver bullion coins alongside polymer-redback gold-layered collectible notes, distributed through the Comptroller’s office and integrated with the Texas Bullion Depository. The coins, produced as official commemoratives and not legal tender, include proof and bullion versions in four nines fine metal. Scott Stillman, CEO Josh Fair, said the products will be sold through national retailers and directly via Texas government website. 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 Golfix Market Rundown. It’s Thursday, 6.50 a.m. Texas has launched its own state-branded gold and silver bullion products, integrating sales through the Comptroller’s office with custody at the Texas Bullion Depository, in a move that expands the state’s role in physical precious metals. We’ll be discussing that and more on Golfix after the markets. Tenure yields are unchanged. The dollar is down seven. The SP500 is up 18. The NASDAQ is up 120. The VIX is down 20 basis points. Gold is 5065, down 19 bucks, a little less than 19.

Silver is 83.45, down 80 cents. Platinum is down 24 dollars. Palladium is up a buck and change. Gold silver is up a little bit. Bitcoin is unchanged bid at $67,900. The spread between Shanghai and US silver is about $10, which is significant. That could be because their market is closed presently. But we’ll see how that opens up. We’d remind you to support independent media by buying a hat, mug, or a hoodie. Thank you very much. UConn students, your expiration for your login for Golfix is probably coming up soon. I’m going to send out a new dot edu handle.

Anyone who has a dot edu that goes for any university student will get a discount from Goldfix if you want to stay on. Thank you, guys. Have a great career. On the front page, front and center, Sunday recap and portfolio discussion. That is a portfolio piece we want to draw your attention to. We don’t usually discuss our portfolio, and we did so in loose terms here. But this would be a very nice 35 to 40 minute piece that goes through the rationale behind how a condor works, the construction of one, and how you can use a condor to make yourself biased bullish or biased bearish or neutral.

Very masterclass oriented university level discussion there for MBA students and people of means who wish to put on condors. We would highly recommend you watch that if you’re trying to learn a little bit more about options. We’ve been getting a lot of people asking about that, so we put it up. All right, first news. Texas officials announced the launch of state branded one ounce gold and silver bullion coins alongside polymer redback gold layered collectible notes distributed through the comptroller’s office and integrated with the Texas bullion depository. The coins produced as official commemoratives and not legal tender include proof and bullion versions in four nines fine metal.

Scott Stillman, CEO Josh Fair, said the products will be sold through national retailers and directly via a Texas government website. Okay, we’re going to do an analysis of this. We’re going to walk through this from the ground floor up. This is a big conversation now at different levels. We’re going to touch on as many levels as we feel borderline qualified to discuss. At the first level, the gold price effect, we believe this is bullish. You are raising awareness of gold as an investment. You are making it easy to purchase through government channels and making it IRA eligible.

That increases accessibility. When you consider the trillions of 401ks rolling into IRAs and an aging population looking for stability, some of the capital can flow into precious metals. On that level alone, this is constructive for gold. Five years from now, we expect gold to be higher. I won’t give you a percentage, but structurally, the direction is favorable. This is why you do not sell your physical. What was done for stocks may now be done for gold inadvertently, meaning the put is below gold because people used to put their money in every week into 401ks.

Well, now it’s going to be going into IRAs and it will probably be at least a decent portion of it going into gold. On the constitutional question, that’s the big debate here or discussion. I won’t call it a debate. Texas is not declaring these coins legal tender. They are commemorative bullion products structured as investment assets. Article one, section 10 restricts states from coining money as legal tender. It can recognize money trading in parallel, but it cannot coin the money. Texas is avoiding that issue by treating them as assets, not currency. They are intended for storage and investment, particularly inside IRAs.

Could they trade informally? Yes. Any asset can be exchanged privately, but they are not circulating as official money and are not recognized as legal tender. Barter transactions can trigger tax consequences, but that remains a federal matter. They’re going to circulate parallel, and if there’s a crisis, they’ll circulate parallel more. Moving up a level, this is also about state strategy. Texas has invested in its depository infrastructure for years. This expands services, retains capital locally, and provides residents with additional savings options. It strengthens the state’s financial ecosystem and keeps asset within its jurisdiction.

As Josh said, this is a distribution network that’s going to seed coin dealers all over the country. At the broader economic level, going up another level, this reflects a trend towards regional resilience. As global systems become more or too complex and they begin to collapse under their own volatility, states and nations look for ways to increase self-sufficiency, providing bullion products and storage capacity fits that framework. It is prudent positioning, not radical restructuring. Finally, what kind of goal, bringing it back to the coin level, what kind of goal should you own widely recognized national coins with liquidity and broad acceptance, American eagles, maple leaves, other sovereign bullion? Circulation and recognition matter.

Novelty pieces do not look for other states to study this model. Some may, some will replicate this model. Over time, states may increase cooperation in recognizing bullion assets across jurisdictions. That would be dangerous, but they could do that. Texas is responding to demand, monetizing infrastructure. It is already built and offering residents another tool for long-term savings. At its core, the message is simple, own physical gold and hold it. That’s our take on it. Moving on. News and analysis, silver squeeze comes to China. Silver China inventories are squeezed by US lockout of Latin America.

Founders AMCT gold and silver analysis. We had a nice report that we broke down for you guys. In case you missed it, Marco Rubio says the US dollars kingdom war. It was brought to my attention that this was set in actually 2023, which kind of kills the urgency of it. But I’ll tell you, it’s pretty revealing that he said it, the way he said it, how he said it, and where have we gone since then? We haven’t gotten better. Coming soon, the chat will be relaunched. I will do that today, I promise. And data on deck, we have home sales today, CPI is tomorrow.

Please support independent media, MAGA hats and MAGA hats. Let’s take a look at the market. Start with WTI. You know, I’m infatuated that right now. If WTI gets above 66 and change, I think 71 is a nice target for you. You have something akin to a measured move here, and that would be your next level, which also coincides with depth equal distance. Bring it to that. So if we stabilize above 66, I’m looking for 71. I’m not long. Okay, so a dollar move in silver either way is, believe it or not, normal right now.

So you can’t panic on a dollar lower. You can’t get euphoric on a dollar higher. You have to understand that we’re in the teeth of this day. The market is digesting a crisis in China that there isn’t here. The market is digesting a move towards corporatism, a move towards re-monetizing bullion. All kinds of various effects are hitting the market. So there’s silver. It’s not above this area yet. Again, you know, people love to blow smoke up your ass, but here you go, down, up, down, up. And this doesn’t look like a flag, but it could be a crap out.

It would be a crap out, not a flag. It would be basically, from here, we’re going to go sideways and a gap higher, or go sideways and work lower like this. So the fish hook in gold, we got it. We got it, right? Now gold just looks better, right? We got the fish hook in gold and we’re stabilizing up here. And I do believe that if we get above 1593, we’re going to run up again. I think I have that on the, it’s easiest to see on the one hour where I’m looking at it.

No. Yeah. 1593 is my level. Now that’s, that’s a little bit too cute. You know, these aren’t small ranges. This is 5090, more or less. And the top of this wick is 5110. That’s $20. That little tiny wick there that you see here. See this here? That’s $20. That’s not 50 cents anymore. You know, these are big ranges. $100 ranges in gold are, are the norm now. Volatility is high and the market’s not going anywhere. Look at that four hour chart. That’s an invitation to sell volatility if I ever saw it. Of course, final words, you don’t want to do what I’m saying here, but just keep it in mind.

Keep it in mind that the market is catching its breath. The $10 range in silver became a $5 range, the $5 range in silver became a $3 range. The $3 range in silver is now a $2 range. Let’s see what happens. If you’re looking for triggers for the market to go higher, during US hours, focus on the dollar. When the dollar weakens, that’ll make the buyers come out of the woodwork. During Asian hours, you don’t want to focus on the dollar. It’ll help. It’s not going to hurt, but you don’t really care about the dollar that much.

It’s more about the flows over there and the rules and how they’re changing them in China and whatever policy makes, whatever policies they are changing on the fly. I’m Vince. Have a great day. Well, thank you, Vince, as always for this morning’s show. Sure is a lot going on out there and market’s moving quickly these days, but hope you found this helpful. Thanks for tuning in and being with us here. And real quick, before we wrap up, did just want to thank Fortuna Mining for bringing us today’s show and obviously Fortuna doing well throughout this gold rally.

And certainly if you’re looking for companies that have exposure to the gold rally, well, you should be aware of the fact that Fortuna is on track for a construction decision at their Diambasu gold project in Senegal, which they released the PEA for back in October that showed an after tax internal rate of return of 72 percent. And that was with a 2750 gold price. And obviously we’re well above that now. And to hear how some of these numbers could look. Well, here’s a comment recently from call we did with Fortuna CEO Jorge Ginoza.

The construction decision for the Ambasu project, which you know, we are quite sure that we will be making a positive decision and full investment decision by mid-year. We are well advanced with our permits and we are so encouraged by the strong economics of the study, the PEA preliminary economic assessment we delivered last year that we have this year allocated a $100 million budget to advance the Ambasu. The Ambasu is a project that at $2,750, that’s the price we used in the study, yields an internal rate of return of 72 percent.

The payback on the project is a few months. So it’s a project of robust economics at $2,750. I don’t even want to plug $4,600 into that financial model because you know what number are we going to get. Well, thank you Jorge for that update. Sure is going to be exciting to see how things pan out in just a couple of months now. And thank you again at home for being here and watching. And in case you missed the last call that we did with Jorge, where he talked more about the Diambasu gold project and a whole lot more that’s going on at Fortuna, well just click on this video that’s coming your way now.

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