Craig Hemke: Gold Price to US$5,000+, Silver to Double in 2026?
Summary
Silver: Bullish case built on a major breakout, persistent supply deficits, and rising industrial and investment demand; potential to continue outpacing as volatility amplifies upside.
Gold: Supported by steady central bank demand and a stair-step breakout pattern, with further gains expected as fiat currencies devalue rather than metals becoming expensive.
Market Structure: COMEX/LBMA dynamics remain opaque, with fewer new shorts from market makers and derivative pricing likely to converge toward tighter physical market conditions.
Physical Tightness: Scarcity and poor geographic placement of metal, plus silver's critical mineral status, may constrain exports and further stress the leverage-based pricing system.
Macro Tailwinds: Anticipated Fed-Treasury coordination, additional liquidity measures, and potential yield curve control drive negative real rates, benefiting precious metals.
Silver Miners: Identified as a top opportunity due to a small universe of primary producers and limited float; even small capital inflows could significantly re-rate the group.
Economic Outlook: Recession timing remains uncertain, but policy likely runs the economy hot to fund deficits, sustaining asset inflation and supporting metals and mining shares.
Investment Perspective: Emphasis on accumulating precious metals exposure as currency debasement persists, with patience for volatility and avoidance of relying on large pullbacks.
Transcript
I'm Charlotte Mloud with investingnews.com and here today with me is Craig Hempy, publisher of tfmetreport.com all the way back to 2010. Thank you so much for being here. >> Yeah, thank you Charlotte. It's always fun to visit with you. Uh, merry Christmas, happy holidays, all that stuff. >> Yes. Yes. All the merry Christmas, happy holiday greetings to you as well. Thank you for coming back to take a look back at 2025 and forward to 2026. I've been starting all of my interviews lately with silver and it feels like that's very appropriate today as well given the price action. I know that you've been bullish on silver, but I'm curious if you saw this big of a breakout coming in 2025. >> No, I did not. Um, I, you know, I I'm at that point in time of the year where I cobble together thoughts for the annual forecast that I write usually between Christmas and New Year's. And I write that just so that I have a like a record that I can go back and check and say, "Man, did I get that freaking wrong? What was I thinking?" Um, and and so it's very helpful in that regard. And I remember entering this year uh thinking, well, we had such a great year last year that it would really be unusual to have two in a row. Like for example, this century, gold had had four years where it was up 25%. It never could follow that up with anything the next year. I think the best year maybe was 2011 where it had like 10%. The other three were all flat to down. And I thought, well, man, if we could just do 10% in 2025, we'd really be on to something. And I mean there were a lot of you know as we entered the year that was even that was a bullish forecast had doge you know and the dollar was soaring and Trump was going to balance the budget and all this other stuff that we all knew was nonsense but still standing in front of that in early January you know to say 3100 or 3200 and $40 silver was kind of outrageous. And so yeah so here we are $67 or so as as uh as we speak. Um there's a number of things going on here that have made it such an outstanding year. And again, for gold to be 25% last year and like 65% this year. Um again, we can't narrow this down just to one thing, I don't believe. But I I do think that maybe there's a little bit of I front running is not the right term or uh taking some gains from next year and bringing them forward, you know, maybe a little bit. But it's been a heck of the year. Silver breaking out is doing a little bit like what gold did in 2024. Gold had gone up to its old all-time highs in 2020 and then it went sideways for like three and a half years. And then it finally broke out and really got going on March the 1st of 2024. And in the 18 months after that, it doubled. So silver went up to 48. uh got there on October the 2nd. Instead of going straight back down like it had two times in its history, it's just continued to go on. And so, you know, I thought then it was probably headed to double like gold has. And it may not take 18 months at this rate, Charlotte. >> Well, I guess I guess we do know that silver is known for being volatile and it moves quickly. So, we'll see how that plays out. And we've got a lot of directions we can go in. But I want to hone in on silver and what's been driving this latest price rise because when it kicked off there was so much speculation about what was going on because it was happening at the same time as that comx shutdown. And I know you've been writing and talking about what is and what isn't driving the silver price right now. So I'm hoping you could get into that. Maybe go over some of the misconceptions that we're seeing as we see silver rise. >> Well, here I am. You know, I'm the guy I'm T Ferguson, right? That's where I got started 15 years ago and irreverent and all that kind of stuff. And now all of a sudden, you know, as I'm almost 60 years old, I'm like the voice of the wise old grizzled veteran. Um, yeah, there's about a hundred reasons to be excited about silver and its prospects and where it's going. We don't need to like invent things. Um, but you know, there's people that are trying to gain a following or whatever, and so you you come up with this hyperbole, and there's a couple of things out there that are just outrageous. Um, one of them, um, the the December contracts for ComX are typically the I mean, they trade all year long. There's typically the busiest month of deliveries, that kind of stuff, at least historically. Now, this year it has been like that because we've had this, you know, the tariffs and the metal flowing back and forth that was well documented all through the first half of the year and all that jazz. Um, so but when the December Comx contract is a big delivery month, it went off the because of the holiday of Thanksgiving in the US, it went off the board on a Wednesday. And then typically if you've got say 10,000 contracts standing uh for delivery about three quarters of that gets delivered uh the first night because if you're short, you're on the issuing side of that. There's no sense in delaying that. Let's get it over with. And that's how it always works. And so uh the first night of those silver deliveries for December was not de Wednesday, the day before Thanksgiving because of the holiday. So, it's Thursday and it posts 7,330 contracts and that was not unusual. People tried to say it was one massive order. It was not. You could look at the breakdown that the CME provides. Some of it went to the house account of uh uh what was it? Uh uh Deutsche Bank. The other another sum of it went to the house account of Royal Bank of Canada. I mean, it was anyway this was nothing unusual. The fact that the CME pulled the plug, the Comx futures are just a tiny part of what's on that platform. Equity futures, fixed income, Forex, all of that stopped trading because of the cooling issue. It had nothing to do with Comx delivery. And that's just an example. I mean there's people out there that say there was a report Charlotte it was like in the what is the Times of India or something that JP Morgan had covered all their shorts and now was that was bogus too. Nobody can know that and it's not like they and then then they build a horde of 750 million ounces. JP Morgan has been building that horde since they first got uh a vault approved by the CME in 2011. And so all through 2012, through 2016 and 17, I documented every other month the the delivery month on Comx, the house account of JP Morgan stopping three or 4 thousand contracts and slowly building up their vault. It didn't just appear overnight, but again, good for clicks, right? Um, so anyway, I I don't know, maybe that's not where you wanted me to go with this question. What I'm getting at is there's, like I said, a hundred of legitimate reasons to be excited about silver. Okay. um the imminent demise of the comx, you know, before New Year's Eve is not one of them. >> I think that that was a good direction to go in with the question. So, thank you for going over that information. I think it's important, especially as we get into, you know, maybe a phase where silver is going more mainstream and there's all this hype surrounding it. So, we've got we've got a hundred reasons that we can be excited about silver. I wonder if you can pull out maybe the top drivers that you'll be watching in 2026 out of those those very many of them. >> Um well let let's just again this is anecdotal but I will point out you know as I watch I don't know if you can see behind me I mean I've got handwritten copies of commitment of treasury reports that go back to 2012 on my desk and it's like a stack like this high. Okay. So I and open interest I've got a spreadsheet that goes back to 2012 of daily open interest changes for 13 years. Okay. So now this is anecdotal but I have noticed um in the last 6 weeks there seems to be a reluctance uh for the market makers to open new shorts. Um, what I've railed out for years is that, you know, you get this big rush of speculator demand. You get this in anything. You get it in a stock. You know, Coca-Cola reports good earnings and everybody rushes in to buy Coca-Cola that day. Well, you got to find willing sellers of existing shares and then the price rises until you do. What that in the ComX usually that's true, but you also get brand new contracts being issued that day, which dilutes the demand. what hasn't been happening for the six weeks is that dilution of demand. Now whether that's, you know, these bank trading desks are going, yeah, we don't want to get in front of this freight train. Um maybe they know that physical metal in New York and London is, you know, in China and every place else is getting rather short and they don't want to mess around with, you know, getting all that. So there are some structural interesting things that are going on in terms of the great things that are really driving silver. Again, you've got gold that has more than doubled. Uh silver is on that path as well. It's not the price that's expensive. That's what gets people get lost on. They're like, "Oh, gold's $4,400. That's so expensive. It's got to go down." No. What's happening? Gold's not going up in value. Silver's not going up in value. It is the the dollar and your Canadian dollar and your euro that are losing value. Now, silver has some industrial applications that make the physical supply demand situation compelling. Okay. And I think probably most of your listeners know this, the supply deficit of 800 million ounces over the last four years, that sort of thing. uh the ongoing um increase of that uh demand whether it's from China or India or even in the US and Canada for the man electronics manufacturing be it solar panels or batteries or you know you go down the list um investment demand that's also creeping up and eating into that spot Charlie I'll give you another one remember all the people I I'm saw this all the time you know silver goes from 48 down to 14 or 15 Right. And then it starts creeping up into the 20s and and there were always people that would say, "Well, it'll never get through 50 cuz as soon as it goes back up to the 40s, everybody will be selling all their metal, you know, and grandma's candlesticks and all this kind of stuff. Didn't happen. Or if it did, okay, it was just a bump in the road. So, at the end of the day, silver becomes a very compelling physical metal issue. And then when you factor in that what remains the dominant pricing scheme is based on derivative trading and unallocated accounts in New York and London. And we don't know the LBMA is deliberately opaque. We have no idea how much actual unencumbered silver metal you know with clear title and you can take delivery. They have no idea how much there is that backs up all those derivative con the you know we all talk about gold silver ratio Charlotte like wow how could it be 100 to1 when they take it out of the ground at 10 to1 well that gives you an idea of how skewed the pricing scheme is through these derivatives you know it's the derivatives and this pretend silver that's passed off as the real thing through price exposure that has driven that that gold silver rate we get back to more of a physically based trade And I don't know what the price of gold will be then, but I know the gold silver ratio won't even be the 60 whatever it is today. You put all these things together, it's just a very compelling trade uh still going forward. >> Certainly, it it sounds like it is. And you touched on a topic that I wanted to go into with you as well, which is the the physical placement of silver. It does feel like for this past year we've been getting to the point where it it is there but it's in the wrong places and that's causing issues in the market. Is that a trend that is going to persist next year? How impactful do you think that could be for the market? >> Well, depends on the extent to which that was actually taking place. You know, the you had this the the market has swung so wildly this year. You know, back in the springtime, there was this huge contango between the spot and the futures price. And everybody said, "Well, that's due to the tariffs and the metals in the wrong spot and it's got to go from New York or from London over to New York." Okay. And seemed like that happened, but I don't know. Do we really know? I don't I suppose. And then in October, all of a sudden, the opposite happens. Uh the spot price soarses way above the futures price, and everybody says, "Well, that's now opposite of this. Now we got to get the metal back to to London. And so we assume that h but we don't again it's all so opaque. I mean even the CME in their daily silver stocks report says this information I mean they put this disclaimer on back in like 2015. This information is taken from sources deemed to be reliable but the CME you know can't be held liable for what's accurate and what's not. And we all I mean then the LBMA is like useless and hopeless in providing accurate information. So, uh, is that a trend? I I I think I'm more confident in saying that the US is going to be more and more reluctant to export any silver that gets within its borders. That one of these fundamental drivers that I failed to mention earlier is this whole critical minerals thing. You know, with all of the ems and ums and all this other stuff no one's ever heard of that was on that list, all of a sudden silver's on there, too. And for good reason. Um, so any mail that does get over here, I I think they're probably reluctant to ship it back abroad. Now, you the banks are involved. They've got a desk in New York and a desk in in London and all that stuff happens. The end of the day, the actual physical commodity, I'm quite confident, uh, is getting I don't know if scarce the right is the right word, u, but let's use it. Getting more and more scarce. And that takes that leverage system and just stresses it and pulls it even tighter. And that then cascades down to price. These banks don't want to get in the way by issuing shorts the way they always used to. You get these days like we've been having for the last month where silver's up $3, you know, 5%. That never used to happen. Um, so anyway, I'm Charlotte, you asked I guess maybe I've had too much coffee. You asked me a question about metal going back and forth. Um I I don't know if we'll continue to see that because I don't know if the fourth part will or the back part will will will continue given the structural physical situation. >> Yeah. Yeah. I think that's a fair answer there. It's it's very tricky. It's hard for me to wrap my head around it. So they >> Oh, they're coming for you. >> What did you do? >> My apologies. I I don't know. They They know we're talking about silver. I'm just gonna sorry you could hear it. >> I Okay, I think it's I think it's fading now. >> Okay. >> Um, so what I was going to ask you, so everybody I think is wondering about silver price in 2026. I'm wondering if you have a a price range that you're looking for next year. I feel a little bit bad asking this question. I've been asking people for their 2026 outlook for silver for the last month or so, and some of the prices that I got were nearly already there. So, any thoughts from you? >> All right. Well, this is gonna I'm going to talk for a while, Charlotte. So, you need to go check and see make sure everything's okay outside. Um, okay. Um, let's start with gold. Gold. Uh, the thing I've gotten wrong over the last couple years is, and I recognized it finally this year, was that the central bank demand and tether demand too is underpinning price. And you can see it in the chart. Ever since it broke out, you know, almost two years ago, it goes up in regular patterns of 20% rally, two to four month price consolidation. Everybody gets used to new new price, 20% rally, two I mean, it's gone this broken out now four times and done that. The next time it does this, and it's going to happen in the first quarter, 20% will take you to about 5,200. And you know, I was saying this all summer long. I said, "Well, 20% from 3500 is going to take us to 4,200." AND PEOPLE LIKE, "OH, IT'S NOT GOING TO 4,000. Are you crazy?" It did. And now we're kind of used to it. And so 5,000 plus is next. Um, silver, I mentioned that and I I hadn't really thought of this before 5 minutes ago, but where gold took 18 months, sorry if my nose is a little itchy, where gold took 18 months to double after it broke out to new all-time highs in March of 2024. A lot of times we'll see silver move 2x to gold up and down. All right. So maybe it takes silver only 9 months to double half the time. Uh it got there in October is when it broke out. So what's 9 months from October? July. Yeah. August. Okay. That didn't work. Now um what's going to drive this now? And and what's my I think the risk too is that some of next year's gains may like I said are maybe being pulled forward into this year. What do I mean by that? We've the signs have been there all year long of where this is headed. Whether it was uh the secretary of the treasury Bessant in Trump's office on February 3rd talking about monetizing the asset side of the balance sheet. Remember that? Um and then he quickly tried to walk that back and then all of a sudden as you mentioned earlier this gold starts flowing across into the US and you know all the Stone X said it was 2,000 tons. Um, so you got that. You've got under other underlying things like Trump's Bitcoin Reserve Act where written in the bill in the actual bill, the House and Senate versions is the uh revaluation that the US holds the gold on their balance sheet from 4222 officially up to whatever price they pick. And when they do that, the Treasury then can just hand out or I mean the Fed can hand out say$ two trillion dollars to the Treasury Department to then and they'll say that that's deficit neutral because they just marked up the asset side and then that they can take that $2 trillion and buy their Bitcoin and build this national sovereign wealth fund. I mean, all these signs have been there all year long, right? further. We're all wondering, "Oh, wow. How hawkish is is Powell and all this stuff and these dissenters and all this cra Powell's gone and Trump is going to put in a yes man whether it's Hasset or Wars or somebody and he's going to cut rates by maybe a couple hundred basis points." Besset has discussed the melding of the operations of Fed and Treasury together to work handinand glove. We've already got Powell announced last week what is undeniably QE. It's interest rate control. They're trying to add $40 billion a month in liquidity on the short end by buying T bills until he's gone first of May. Well, what's the biggest concern then if you're going to cut short rates is what happens to long rates. And it eventually when you're melding the Fed and Treasury together that's they're going to yield curve control the long end too. First just through job boning and then eventually if they have to actual QE that institutes sharply negative real interest rates and all of this stuff is if you're not told directly it's pretty easy at least as I sit here every day to connect all those dots all year long. And that's why gold keeps going up. That's why silver went to 48 and then didn't go back to 28. It's now 68. All of this is coming next year and um I think it presents I mean you're not going to get a green candle every single day and every single week and I'm sure there'll be a month with a red monthly candle as well because that's just how these things eb and flow. But if you think that um 4,400 is expensive and you're waiting for some big dip or if you think silver's got to go back to its 200 day moving average or something, you may be disappointed. Um, I think it's going to be a big year next year, too. >> It really sounds like it could be just based on what you're seeing. And I know we usually stick to gold and silver precious metal prices. What is your outlook for the US economy in this situation heading into next year? >> Well, I've been talking about that macrocast. I think I've got about three years in a row of saying, "Okay, surely this is the year it tips over into recession." Um I thought for sure this year would because uh traditionally if the yield curve inverts from 2 years to 10 years where the two year is a higher yield than the 10 that's a sign that recession is coming. It's when it uninverts which is what happened late last year that then the recession has begun. Well here we are. I mean they're still printing numbers that show growth but the employment situation isn't good. Um and in a sense recessions can be talked into existence and what I mean by that you know if pe enough people start thinking that we're going into recession then they start curtailing their spending they start doing this and you know and it I said you kind of talk it into existence and that just hasn't happened yet. Um I do think the economic assumptions are a little too rosy. I also think the uh interest pay or the uh income payments in the income tax payments and receipts that the US government is counting on and trying to manage the deficit. I think that's too rosy. The spending just continues unabated. Um and so I don't know maybe the economy just continues to bump along at a stated 1 or 2% like the Fed says, but that does not change the the the problem of the underlying math. And that's what this site has been about for 15 years. It's the math is the math. And in a debt-based monetary system, you just got to continue to devalue and you got to continue to print. And eventually it takes more you're just servicing the existing debt, which over the last 12 months on a running 12-month total is now $1.25 trillion. Just simply servicing the existing debt becomes one of, if not the largest line item for the federal budget. So they're going to have to try to run it hot. they're going to have to try to keep the economy going just to generate growth and generate tax receipts. If that if and when that eventually slows, you know, that just exacerbates the problem even wider because revenues fall to the government and, you know, costs just keep going up and that deficit gets worse and then that continues to compound. So, uh, like I said, I've been expecting a recession. It hasn't happened yet. I think the way they're going to try to run it so hot next year probably won't happen next year either. And in the end, Charlotte, this is good for not just gold and silver. This we're kind of in that crack up boom phase that the Austrian economists have always talked about where they're just printing so much cash that it has to go anywhere. I mean, everybody every time the stock market goes down 3%. THEY'RE LIKE, "OH, HERE COMES THE big crash." And then all it just goes to another all-time high. And I don't mean to be whistling past the graveyard, but there's a reason why everything just keeps going up because they just keep printing cash. Not in the US, but everywhere. And all of that just uh flows down to all these different investment assets and gold and silver and the mining shares uh benefit as part of that. >> Yes. And I think maybe this is a a leadin to a fun question I wanted to ask you before I let you go, which is for 2026, do you have a pick for top performing asset of the year? It doesn't have to be a commodity, but of course it could be. >> That's a good question. Uh the easy thing would be to say silver, right? Because if I think gold's going to keep going up and silver goes at 2x that and if it really stresses the system and I mean there are guys that I have for whom I have great respect like Michael Oliver who got started at EF Hutton, you know, when I was like 10 years old um and he thinks silver is going to 200. So that would be okay. So there's an easy one. Let's let's think outside the box. Um I I'm gonna continue let let's go with the silver mining shares. Um if you whether you can buy an ETF, you know, the easiest thing for people, you know, is just buy the SIL or something like that. Um because if we're right, there's just not very many of them. I mean, how many primary silver miners are in the world? Uh eight. I mean, they're publicly tra there not very many. Most of the silver production comes as a byproduct, you know, of base metals, you know, zinc and lead and stuff like that, copper, uh, even gold. Um, and so I I there's just not not that many investment opportunities. Charlotte, there's what the market cap of the big five US stocks is like 20 trillion. What's the market cap of the leading eight silver producers? I don't I don't I don't even know. 20 billion. Is it even that much? Um, yeah. So, if you just peel off a little tiny fraction of the money that's out there, you know, chasing the momentum in these big cap stocks, you peel off a basis point, that's 200 billion. Where does that I You talk about finding willing sellers, right? uh of existing shares and all this money just comes into our sector and starts chasing a very limited number of opportunities. I mean, they could really uh astonish where some of those things go from here. So, all right, there you go. Uh the silver mining sector number one. >> Okay, sounds good. I've gotten quite a lot of votes for silver for short. Nice twist with the silver mining stocks. And I'll let you go unless you had any final thoughts, words of advice for investors heading into the new year. I'm going to give you uh all of your people out there. I'm just looking down at this thing. You've probably seen me hold this before, right? It's not it's not a good delivery bar, okay? So, don't come to my house. Um it's a piggy bank, right? But most people have seen these, you know, stacked on a pallet at the Bank of England, right? A 400 ounce London good delivery bar is still kind of the international standard, though kilo bars are now mostly. Anyway, when Nixon closed the gold window in 1971, you could get your hands on one of these babies for about $14,000. Okay. By the end of the 20th century, it took about $140,000 to buy this. Now we're at $4,000 gold and plus. That's like $1.4 million. So, um, assuming this was real, did this change? The gold's just the gold. The gold is the measuring stick. Okay? It's not It It doesn't get like more versatile. It doesn't become more productive. It doesn't It just It just collects the dust. It's a pet rock. It doesn't pay interest. It's just a measuring stick. What's changing is the purchasing power of your fiat currency. And that's why you have to own it. And that's why it's not expensive. 10 years ago, gold was $1,100 an ounce. Five years ago was 22. Now it's 44. Okay? So my final advice is don't look at it and go, "Oh, it's too expensive." No. Your currency is just getting weaker and weaker, and that trend is not going to change. So just keep adding some. It's your protection against the madness. It'll get you through the storm. It uh preserves your net worth from the destruction of these bankers and politicians. Uh don't go into next year thinking, "Oh, it's got to be have some huge pullback because otherwise over time you're just going to get left behind." >> Well, I think that's a great note to wrap up on and I always love the inclusion of a prop. So, thank you so much for always fun. Thank you so much for coming on today to talk about what's going on in Gold and Silver. This was great. >> Always fun to get caught up, Charlotte. Have a great holiday season and and let's have a fun 26. >> I think we will. And once again, I'm Charlotte Mloud with investingnews.com and this is Craig Heb. Thank you. Oh,
Craig Hemke: Gold Price to US$5,000+, Silver to Double in 2026?
Summary
Transcript
I'm Charlotte Mloud with investingnews.com and here today with me is Craig Hempy, publisher of tfmetreport.com all the way back to 2010. Thank you so much for being here. >> Yeah, thank you Charlotte. It's always fun to visit with you. Uh, merry Christmas, happy holidays, all that stuff. >> Yes. Yes. All the merry Christmas, happy holiday greetings to you as well. Thank you for coming back to take a look back at 2025 and forward to 2026. I've been starting all of my interviews lately with silver and it feels like that's very appropriate today as well given the price action. I know that you've been bullish on silver, but I'm curious if you saw this big of a breakout coming in 2025. >> No, I did not. Um, I, you know, I I'm at that point in time of the year where I cobble together thoughts for the annual forecast that I write usually between Christmas and New Year's. And I write that just so that I have a like a record that I can go back and check and say, "Man, did I get that freaking wrong? What was I thinking?" Um, and and so it's very helpful in that regard. And I remember entering this year uh thinking, well, we had such a great year last year that it would really be unusual to have two in a row. Like for example, this century, gold had had four years where it was up 25%. It never could follow that up with anything the next year. I think the best year maybe was 2011 where it had like 10%. The other three were all flat to down. And I thought, well, man, if we could just do 10% in 2025, we'd really be on to something. And I mean there were a lot of you know as we entered the year that was even that was a bullish forecast had doge you know and the dollar was soaring and Trump was going to balance the budget and all this other stuff that we all knew was nonsense but still standing in front of that in early January you know to say 3100 or 3200 and $40 silver was kind of outrageous. And so yeah so here we are $67 or so as as uh as we speak. Um there's a number of things going on here that have made it such an outstanding year. And again, for gold to be 25% last year and like 65% this year. Um again, we can't narrow this down just to one thing, I don't believe. But I I do think that maybe there's a little bit of I front running is not the right term or uh taking some gains from next year and bringing them forward, you know, maybe a little bit. But it's been a heck of the year. Silver breaking out is doing a little bit like what gold did in 2024. Gold had gone up to its old all-time highs in 2020 and then it went sideways for like three and a half years. And then it finally broke out and really got going on March the 1st of 2024. And in the 18 months after that, it doubled. So silver went up to 48. uh got there on October the 2nd. Instead of going straight back down like it had two times in its history, it's just continued to go on. And so, you know, I thought then it was probably headed to double like gold has. And it may not take 18 months at this rate, Charlotte. >> Well, I guess I guess we do know that silver is known for being volatile and it moves quickly. So, we'll see how that plays out. And we've got a lot of directions we can go in. But I want to hone in on silver and what's been driving this latest price rise because when it kicked off there was so much speculation about what was going on because it was happening at the same time as that comx shutdown. And I know you've been writing and talking about what is and what isn't driving the silver price right now. So I'm hoping you could get into that. Maybe go over some of the misconceptions that we're seeing as we see silver rise. >> Well, here I am. You know, I'm the guy I'm T Ferguson, right? That's where I got started 15 years ago and irreverent and all that kind of stuff. And now all of a sudden, you know, as I'm almost 60 years old, I'm like the voice of the wise old grizzled veteran. Um, yeah, there's about a hundred reasons to be excited about silver and its prospects and where it's going. We don't need to like invent things. Um, but you know, there's people that are trying to gain a following or whatever, and so you you come up with this hyperbole, and there's a couple of things out there that are just outrageous. Um, one of them, um, the the December contracts for ComX are typically the I mean, they trade all year long. There's typically the busiest month of deliveries, that kind of stuff, at least historically. Now, this year it has been like that because we've had this, you know, the tariffs and the metal flowing back and forth that was well documented all through the first half of the year and all that jazz. Um, so but when the December Comx contract is a big delivery month, it went off the because of the holiday of Thanksgiving in the US, it went off the board on a Wednesday. And then typically if you've got say 10,000 contracts standing uh for delivery about three quarters of that gets delivered uh the first night because if you're short, you're on the issuing side of that. There's no sense in delaying that. Let's get it over with. And that's how it always works. And so uh the first night of those silver deliveries for December was not de Wednesday, the day before Thanksgiving because of the holiday. So, it's Thursday and it posts 7,330 contracts and that was not unusual. People tried to say it was one massive order. It was not. You could look at the breakdown that the CME provides. Some of it went to the house account of uh uh what was it? Uh uh Deutsche Bank. The other another sum of it went to the house account of Royal Bank of Canada. I mean, it was anyway this was nothing unusual. The fact that the CME pulled the plug, the Comx futures are just a tiny part of what's on that platform. Equity futures, fixed income, Forex, all of that stopped trading because of the cooling issue. It had nothing to do with Comx delivery. And that's just an example. I mean there's people out there that say there was a report Charlotte it was like in the what is the Times of India or something that JP Morgan had covered all their shorts and now was that was bogus too. Nobody can know that and it's not like they and then then they build a horde of 750 million ounces. JP Morgan has been building that horde since they first got uh a vault approved by the CME in 2011. And so all through 2012, through 2016 and 17, I documented every other month the the delivery month on Comx, the house account of JP Morgan stopping three or 4 thousand contracts and slowly building up their vault. It didn't just appear overnight, but again, good for clicks, right? Um, so anyway, I I don't know, maybe that's not where you wanted me to go with this question. What I'm getting at is there's, like I said, a hundred of legitimate reasons to be excited about silver. Okay. um the imminent demise of the comx, you know, before New Year's Eve is not one of them. >> I think that that was a good direction to go in with the question. So, thank you for going over that information. I think it's important, especially as we get into, you know, maybe a phase where silver is going more mainstream and there's all this hype surrounding it. So, we've got we've got a hundred reasons that we can be excited about silver. I wonder if you can pull out maybe the top drivers that you'll be watching in 2026 out of those those very many of them. >> Um well let let's just again this is anecdotal but I will point out you know as I watch I don't know if you can see behind me I mean I've got handwritten copies of commitment of treasury reports that go back to 2012 on my desk and it's like a stack like this high. Okay. So I and open interest I've got a spreadsheet that goes back to 2012 of daily open interest changes for 13 years. Okay. So now this is anecdotal but I have noticed um in the last 6 weeks there seems to be a reluctance uh for the market makers to open new shorts. Um, what I've railed out for years is that, you know, you get this big rush of speculator demand. You get this in anything. You get it in a stock. You know, Coca-Cola reports good earnings and everybody rushes in to buy Coca-Cola that day. Well, you got to find willing sellers of existing shares and then the price rises until you do. What that in the ComX usually that's true, but you also get brand new contracts being issued that day, which dilutes the demand. what hasn't been happening for the six weeks is that dilution of demand. Now whether that's, you know, these bank trading desks are going, yeah, we don't want to get in front of this freight train. Um maybe they know that physical metal in New York and London is, you know, in China and every place else is getting rather short and they don't want to mess around with, you know, getting all that. So there are some structural interesting things that are going on in terms of the great things that are really driving silver. Again, you've got gold that has more than doubled. Uh silver is on that path as well. It's not the price that's expensive. That's what gets people get lost on. They're like, "Oh, gold's $4,400. That's so expensive. It's got to go down." No. What's happening? Gold's not going up in value. Silver's not going up in value. It is the the dollar and your Canadian dollar and your euro that are losing value. Now, silver has some industrial applications that make the physical supply demand situation compelling. Okay. And I think probably most of your listeners know this, the supply deficit of 800 million ounces over the last four years, that sort of thing. uh the ongoing um increase of that uh demand whether it's from China or India or even in the US and Canada for the man electronics manufacturing be it solar panels or batteries or you know you go down the list um investment demand that's also creeping up and eating into that spot Charlie I'll give you another one remember all the people I I'm saw this all the time you know silver goes from 48 down to 14 or 15 Right. And then it starts creeping up into the 20s and and there were always people that would say, "Well, it'll never get through 50 cuz as soon as it goes back up to the 40s, everybody will be selling all their metal, you know, and grandma's candlesticks and all this kind of stuff. Didn't happen. Or if it did, okay, it was just a bump in the road. So, at the end of the day, silver becomes a very compelling physical metal issue. And then when you factor in that what remains the dominant pricing scheme is based on derivative trading and unallocated accounts in New York and London. And we don't know the LBMA is deliberately opaque. We have no idea how much actual unencumbered silver metal you know with clear title and you can take delivery. They have no idea how much there is that backs up all those derivative con the you know we all talk about gold silver ratio Charlotte like wow how could it be 100 to1 when they take it out of the ground at 10 to1 well that gives you an idea of how skewed the pricing scheme is through these derivatives you know it's the derivatives and this pretend silver that's passed off as the real thing through price exposure that has driven that that gold silver rate we get back to more of a physically based trade And I don't know what the price of gold will be then, but I know the gold silver ratio won't even be the 60 whatever it is today. You put all these things together, it's just a very compelling trade uh still going forward. >> Certainly, it it sounds like it is. And you touched on a topic that I wanted to go into with you as well, which is the the physical placement of silver. It does feel like for this past year we've been getting to the point where it it is there but it's in the wrong places and that's causing issues in the market. Is that a trend that is going to persist next year? How impactful do you think that could be for the market? >> Well, depends on the extent to which that was actually taking place. You know, the you had this the the market has swung so wildly this year. You know, back in the springtime, there was this huge contango between the spot and the futures price. And everybody said, "Well, that's due to the tariffs and the metals in the wrong spot and it's got to go from New York or from London over to New York." Okay. And seemed like that happened, but I don't know. Do we really know? I don't I suppose. And then in October, all of a sudden, the opposite happens. Uh the spot price soarses way above the futures price, and everybody says, "Well, that's now opposite of this. Now we got to get the metal back to to London. And so we assume that h but we don't again it's all so opaque. I mean even the CME in their daily silver stocks report says this information I mean they put this disclaimer on back in like 2015. This information is taken from sources deemed to be reliable but the CME you know can't be held liable for what's accurate and what's not. And we all I mean then the LBMA is like useless and hopeless in providing accurate information. So, uh, is that a trend? I I I think I'm more confident in saying that the US is going to be more and more reluctant to export any silver that gets within its borders. That one of these fundamental drivers that I failed to mention earlier is this whole critical minerals thing. You know, with all of the ems and ums and all this other stuff no one's ever heard of that was on that list, all of a sudden silver's on there, too. And for good reason. Um, so any mail that does get over here, I I think they're probably reluctant to ship it back abroad. Now, you the banks are involved. They've got a desk in New York and a desk in in London and all that stuff happens. The end of the day, the actual physical commodity, I'm quite confident, uh, is getting I don't know if scarce the right is the right word, u, but let's use it. Getting more and more scarce. And that takes that leverage system and just stresses it and pulls it even tighter. And that then cascades down to price. These banks don't want to get in the way by issuing shorts the way they always used to. You get these days like we've been having for the last month where silver's up $3, you know, 5%. That never used to happen. Um, so anyway, I'm Charlotte, you asked I guess maybe I've had too much coffee. You asked me a question about metal going back and forth. Um I I don't know if we'll continue to see that because I don't know if the fourth part will or the back part will will will continue given the structural physical situation. >> Yeah. Yeah. I think that's a fair answer there. It's it's very tricky. It's hard for me to wrap my head around it. So they >> Oh, they're coming for you. >> What did you do? >> My apologies. I I don't know. They They know we're talking about silver. I'm just gonna sorry you could hear it. >> I Okay, I think it's I think it's fading now. >> Okay. >> Um, so what I was going to ask you, so everybody I think is wondering about silver price in 2026. I'm wondering if you have a a price range that you're looking for next year. I feel a little bit bad asking this question. I've been asking people for their 2026 outlook for silver for the last month or so, and some of the prices that I got were nearly already there. So, any thoughts from you? >> All right. Well, this is gonna I'm going to talk for a while, Charlotte. So, you need to go check and see make sure everything's okay outside. Um, okay. Um, let's start with gold. Gold. Uh, the thing I've gotten wrong over the last couple years is, and I recognized it finally this year, was that the central bank demand and tether demand too is underpinning price. And you can see it in the chart. Ever since it broke out, you know, almost two years ago, it goes up in regular patterns of 20% rally, two to four month price consolidation. Everybody gets used to new new price, 20% rally, two I mean, it's gone this broken out now four times and done that. The next time it does this, and it's going to happen in the first quarter, 20% will take you to about 5,200. And you know, I was saying this all summer long. I said, "Well, 20% from 3500 is going to take us to 4,200." AND PEOPLE LIKE, "OH, IT'S NOT GOING TO 4,000. Are you crazy?" It did. And now we're kind of used to it. And so 5,000 plus is next. Um, silver, I mentioned that and I I hadn't really thought of this before 5 minutes ago, but where gold took 18 months, sorry if my nose is a little itchy, where gold took 18 months to double after it broke out to new all-time highs in March of 2024. A lot of times we'll see silver move 2x to gold up and down. All right. So maybe it takes silver only 9 months to double half the time. Uh it got there in October is when it broke out. So what's 9 months from October? July. Yeah. August. Okay. That didn't work. Now um what's going to drive this now? And and what's my I think the risk too is that some of next year's gains may like I said are maybe being pulled forward into this year. What do I mean by that? We've the signs have been there all year long of where this is headed. Whether it was uh the secretary of the treasury Bessant in Trump's office on February 3rd talking about monetizing the asset side of the balance sheet. Remember that? Um and then he quickly tried to walk that back and then all of a sudden as you mentioned earlier this gold starts flowing across into the US and you know all the Stone X said it was 2,000 tons. Um, so you got that. You've got under other underlying things like Trump's Bitcoin Reserve Act where written in the bill in the actual bill, the House and Senate versions is the uh revaluation that the US holds the gold on their balance sheet from 4222 officially up to whatever price they pick. And when they do that, the Treasury then can just hand out or I mean the Fed can hand out say$ two trillion dollars to the Treasury Department to then and they'll say that that's deficit neutral because they just marked up the asset side and then that they can take that $2 trillion and buy their Bitcoin and build this national sovereign wealth fund. I mean, all these signs have been there all year long, right? further. We're all wondering, "Oh, wow. How hawkish is is Powell and all this stuff and these dissenters and all this cra Powell's gone and Trump is going to put in a yes man whether it's Hasset or Wars or somebody and he's going to cut rates by maybe a couple hundred basis points." Besset has discussed the melding of the operations of Fed and Treasury together to work handinand glove. We've already got Powell announced last week what is undeniably QE. It's interest rate control. They're trying to add $40 billion a month in liquidity on the short end by buying T bills until he's gone first of May. Well, what's the biggest concern then if you're going to cut short rates is what happens to long rates. And it eventually when you're melding the Fed and Treasury together that's they're going to yield curve control the long end too. First just through job boning and then eventually if they have to actual QE that institutes sharply negative real interest rates and all of this stuff is if you're not told directly it's pretty easy at least as I sit here every day to connect all those dots all year long. And that's why gold keeps going up. That's why silver went to 48 and then didn't go back to 28. It's now 68. All of this is coming next year and um I think it presents I mean you're not going to get a green candle every single day and every single week and I'm sure there'll be a month with a red monthly candle as well because that's just how these things eb and flow. But if you think that um 4,400 is expensive and you're waiting for some big dip or if you think silver's got to go back to its 200 day moving average or something, you may be disappointed. Um, I think it's going to be a big year next year, too. >> It really sounds like it could be just based on what you're seeing. And I know we usually stick to gold and silver precious metal prices. What is your outlook for the US economy in this situation heading into next year? >> Well, I've been talking about that macrocast. I think I've got about three years in a row of saying, "Okay, surely this is the year it tips over into recession." Um I thought for sure this year would because uh traditionally if the yield curve inverts from 2 years to 10 years where the two year is a higher yield than the 10 that's a sign that recession is coming. It's when it uninverts which is what happened late last year that then the recession has begun. Well here we are. I mean they're still printing numbers that show growth but the employment situation isn't good. Um and in a sense recessions can be talked into existence and what I mean by that you know if pe enough people start thinking that we're going into recession then they start curtailing their spending they start doing this and you know and it I said you kind of talk it into existence and that just hasn't happened yet. Um I do think the economic assumptions are a little too rosy. I also think the uh interest pay or the uh income payments in the income tax payments and receipts that the US government is counting on and trying to manage the deficit. I think that's too rosy. The spending just continues unabated. Um and so I don't know maybe the economy just continues to bump along at a stated 1 or 2% like the Fed says, but that does not change the the the problem of the underlying math. And that's what this site has been about for 15 years. It's the math is the math. And in a debt-based monetary system, you just got to continue to devalue and you got to continue to print. And eventually it takes more you're just servicing the existing debt, which over the last 12 months on a running 12-month total is now $1.25 trillion. Just simply servicing the existing debt becomes one of, if not the largest line item for the federal budget. So they're going to have to try to run it hot. they're going to have to try to keep the economy going just to generate growth and generate tax receipts. If that if and when that eventually slows, you know, that just exacerbates the problem even wider because revenues fall to the government and, you know, costs just keep going up and that deficit gets worse and then that continues to compound. So, uh, like I said, I've been expecting a recession. It hasn't happened yet. I think the way they're going to try to run it so hot next year probably won't happen next year either. And in the end, Charlotte, this is good for not just gold and silver. This we're kind of in that crack up boom phase that the Austrian economists have always talked about where they're just printing so much cash that it has to go anywhere. I mean, everybody every time the stock market goes down 3%. THEY'RE LIKE, "OH, HERE COMES THE big crash." And then all it just goes to another all-time high. And I don't mean to be whistling past the graveyard, but there's a reason why everything just keeps going up because they just keep printing cash. Not in the US, but everywhere. And all of that just uh flows down to all these different investment assets and gold and silver and the mining shares uh benefit as part of that. >> Yes. And I think maybe this is a a leadin to a fun question I wanted to ask you before I let you go, which is for 2026, do you have a pick for top performing asset of the year? It doesn't have to be a commodity, but of course it could be. >> That's a good question. Uh the easy thing would be to say silver, right? Because if I think gold's going to keep going up and silver goes at 2x that and if it really stresses the system and I mean there are guys that I have for whom I have great respect like Michael Oliver who got started at EF Hutton, you know, when I was like 10 years old um and he thinks silver is going to 200. So that would be okay. So there's an easy one. Let's let's think outside the box. Um I I'm gonna continue let let's go with the silver mining shares. Um if you whether you can buy an ETF, you know, the easiest thing for people, you know, is just buy the SIL or something like that. Um because if we're right, there's just not very many of them. I mean, how many primary silver miners are in the world? Uh eight. I mean, they're publicly tra there not very many. Most of the silver production comes as a byproduct, you know, of base metals, you know, zinc and lead and stuff like that, copper, uh, even gold. Um, and so I I there's just not not that many investment opportunities. Charlotte, there's what the market cap of the big five US stocks is like 20 trillion. What's the market cap of the leading eight silver producers? I don't I don't I don't even know. 20 billion. Is it even that much? Um, yeah. So, if you just peel off a little tiny fraction of the money that's out there, you know, chasing the momentum in these big cap stocks, you peel off a basis point, that's 200 billion. Where does that I You talk about finding willing sellers, right? uh of existing shares and all this money just comes into our sector and starts chasing a very limited number of opportunities. I mean, they could really uh astonish where some of those things go from here. So, all right, there you go. Uh the silver mining sector number one. >> Okay, sounds good. I've gotten quite a lot of votes for silver for short. Nice twist with the silver mining stocks. And I'll let you go unless you had any final thoughts, words of advice for investors heading into the new year. I'm going to give you uh all of your people out there. I'm just looking down at this thing. You've probably seen me hold this before, right? It's not it's not a good delivery bar, okay? So, don't come to my house. Um it's a piggy bank, right? But most people have seen these, you know, stacked on a pallet at the Bank of England, right? A 400 ounce London good delivery bar is still kind of the international standard, though kilo bars are now mostly. Anyway, when Nixon closed the gold window in 1971, you could get your hands on one of these babies for about $14,000. Okay. By the end of the 20th century, it took about $140,000 to buy this. Now we're at $4,000 gold and plus. That's like $1.4 million. So, um, assuming this was real, did this change? The gold's just the gold. The gold is the measuring stick. Okay? It's not It It doesn't get like more versatile. It doesn't become more productive. It doesn't It just It just collects the dust. It's a pet rock. It doesn't pay interest. It's just a measuring stick. What's changing is the purchasing power of your fiat currency. And that's why you have to own it. And that's why it's not expensive. 10 years ago, gold was $1,100 an ounce. Five years ago was 22. Now it's 44. Okay? So my final advice is don't look at it and go, "Oh, it's too expensive." No. Your currency is just getting weaker and weaker, and that trend is not going to change. So just keep adding some. It's your protection against the madness. It'll get you through the storm. It uh preserves your net worth from the destruction of these bankers and politicians. Uh don't go into next year thinking, "Oh, it's got to be have some huge pullback because otherwise over time you're just going to get left behind." >> Well, I think that's a great note to wrap up on and I always love the inclusion of a prop. So, thank you so much for always fun. Thank you so much for coming on today to talk about what's going on in Gold and Silver. This was great. >> Always fun to get caught up, Charlotte. Have a great holiday season and and let's have a fun 26. >> I think we will. And once again, I'm Charlotte Mloud with investingnews.com and this is Craig Heb. Thank you. Oh,