“There’s No Better Buy on the Planet” Stark GOLD & SILVER Warning | Andy Schectman
Summary
Precious Metals: The guest argues gold’s role as wealth and hedge is unchanged, with strong demand despite volatile headlines and paper-price dynamics.
Silver Outlook: Silver is highlighted as a highly asymmetric opportunity, with record Chinese imports, strong Indian interest, and large COMEX withdrawals contradicting weak paper prices.
Central Bank Buying: Persistent central bank accumulation and gold repatriation underscore a flight from counterparty risk and eroding trust in the Western financial system.
China and BRICS: China-led de-dollarization via yuan-settled trade, SIPs/Embridge, and an expanding vault network points to gold as neutral collateral in a multipolar system.
Market Structure: The guest cites ETF rebalancing and CME margin hikes as drivers of short-term price collapses that sophisticated buyers exploit to secure physical metal.
Supply Dynamics: Silver supply risks are rising due to dependence on copper byproduct output and constraints tied to sulfuric acid and broader refining bottlenecks.
Macro Risks: Rising 10-year Treasury yields could pressure risk assets; the guest sees Treasuries as unattractive versus gold due to higher inflation and sanction risk.
Equities: No specific public-company pitches; the focus is on macro themes and precious metals positioning.
Transcript
What is the role of gold today? India's premier Modi just told his his his people not to buy any gold for the next 12 months and and gold is reacting very much to headlines coming out of the Fed, inflation headlines. Has the has the function of gold. Has the role of gold changed? And of course, we'll take a very close look at silver because Modi only mentioned gold. He didn't mention silver and silver shot up 7% yesterday. Has the role of silver changed? Is it a monetary metal again or is it just industrial? We'll talk about all of that with our guest Andy Sheckchman. He's the president over at Miles Franklin. I'm really looking forward to having him back on here in a few short seconds. But first, I need to remind you, hit that like and subscribe button. It helps with the algorithm. It helps reach a wider audience. It helps educate more people about what is happening really out there in the world. So, thanks so much for doing that. Now, Andy, it is great to have you back on the program. It's good to see you again, my friend. >> Kai, always great to see you, brother. Appreciate it very very much. >> Yeah, really looking forward to the next 30 minutes with you Andy. We have lots to discuss and I really want to start with my opening question here in the intro is like what is the role of gold today. Has it changed? >> No, it hasn't changed to me. Um, gold is wealth, plain and simply. It's outlived two world wars, German hyperinflation, the Great Depression, and you know, like the World Economic Forum paper that we saw not too long ago speaking of the next crisis being a poly crisis. The idea is simply society faces multiple overlapping crisises at once. Crisis crisises at once. And we're seeing that everywhere. Um, gold is wealth and it's outside of the system which if held uh in your own possession has no counterparty risk. I think those are the things that are accentuating the demand for gold right now. >> 100%. And uh like I mentioned like gold is reacting very much to headlines and uh maybe in in a contradictory way as well because you'd think okay inflation is rising wouldn't you want to own more gold but gold is going trending down. What why is that Andy? That's that is a a bit puzzling quite honestly and we've discussed this here on the channel before but I'm curious what your take on that is and how you see it trade. >> That narrative is actually crap. I mean pardon my French but you know the theory is well if inflation is rising well then you know the Fed can't be dovish. They have to be hawkish. And evidently gold only moves up when interest rates fall down. But let's not forget that a couple years ago, you had gold at 1,800 bucks, 2022ish, uh, and the federal funds rate pretty much nailed to the floor at zero 2021, 2022. And we watched interest rates move up 450 basis points in the shortest amount of time ever. And lo and behold, gold has nearly tripled since then. So that narrative is convenient for the talking heads when they, you know, when it when it fits their argument. They ignore it when it doesn't. In essence, what it truly is is as what it's always been. It's been the central bank and excuse me, the the central bank and the and through the commercial banks ability to suppress the paper price. But what is breaking the paper price guy is as they go and do this as they hold it down. We see countries like China who purchased 160,000 ounces of gold in March. They added another 260,000 in in April. That's almost nine times the monthly purchase amount from uh year-over-year from last year to this year. And this is when the price was getting its teeth kicked in. After 18 consecutive months of adding gold, you would think people would understand that price is nothing but a tool of misdirection. The narrative that we are being told is hogwash as the biggest money in the world stands for delivery. And it's not just China. We're seeing it elsewhere, but they're a good example of of what it is I'm talking about. By the way, I know we're going to talk about silver, but in in February and March, after the price was destroyed in silver, China bought more silver and imported more silver in those months, the largest ever in February, and then the larger still setting an all-time record in March of silver, more than they've ever imported in the history of the country as the price was being decimated. Price is a tool of misdirection and the big money, the sophisticated money who understands this, who's been using the western suppression against us for a long time by standing for delivery, it's accelerating. And nowhere do you see that better than in the import export numbers into China. >> Yeah. World Gold Council report for Q1 stated 244 tons bought um despite the record prices. As you as you pointed out, Mark, the the central banks purely ignored the fact of price. they're somewhat price agnostic. Um like why are they doing that? Like have have we gotten more like intel perhaps on the reasons why they're doing it? Have they shed more light? Um a few months in now has have the central bank commissioners or officers come out and say, "Hey, this is why we're doing it." Have they put a clear message out? >> I don't know why they would ever tell you the truth, but I found the most illuminating comment come from a guy named Adam Gapinsky, who is the head of the Polish National Bank. And you know, Poland's bought more gold than just about anybody. Now, I'm going to I don't think I have this. No, I don't. I'm going to paraphrase this pretty pretty close. They asked him, Adam, why do why is Poland buying so much gold? And he said two things that really freaked me out. One, he said, you know, he he spoke of a new world order, a new financial order that where gold will play a prominent role. And that to me was very alarming in and of itself, where a central banker talks about a new a new system, a new world order. But the most startling comment that he made and I put this on the heels of when uh Secretary Bassant talked about his concern about AI and and quantum computing and what it the security threats to the banking system. He came out and said Glinsky the the head of the Polish National Bank and and this is pretty close to what he said verbatim. He said Poland buys gold because in the event that someone pulls the plug on a global financial system that is largely based on electronic accounting records, gold will allow this country to remain stable and solid from an economic standpoint. More or less, that's what he said. In other words, to hear a central banker say when someone shuts off the power to the global financial system that runs on electric accounting records, it was very, very eye opening to me. But the real reason, Kai, it's counterparty risk again. When when we crossed the the Rubicon and and and froze the Russian forex reserves, we kicked them out of Swift. Well, that's a hard hard line to come back from. And you look at the fiscal irresponsibility of the United States where creating debt uh at a at a pace no one's ever seen before. watering down the currency, watering down the value of the treasuries, and then if you're on the wrong side of the US agenda, actually having those treasuries frozen and or taken from you. These are the reasons that we are seeing a move away in my opinion from the treasury market. It's less about ddollarization. Okay, so dollars are needed to run the world and more about, if it were a word, dregurization. And as countries sell treasuries to buy gold, like China has cut their treasury holdings in half is massively buying gold. You look at the performance of the 10-year Treasury versus gold over 25 years. The Treasury market has performed 50% or gold has doubled. The Treasury market, look at it. The last two years, it's over 10xed it with no counterparty risk. So its performance is better. It has no counterparty risk. Uh and and I think that is beginning to to you know become very evident in in a world where our indebtedness is not getting better at all. And the Congressional Budget Office is talking about $2 trillion interest payments within the next several years as the debt continues to grow. And that's called the Ferguson law. When a country spends more money on debt service than they do on their uh military, they cease to become a superpower over time. and and that's in in essence the road that we're heading down. I hope it doesn't happen that way, but these would be the reasons that I would think that the central banks behind the scenes are are doing what they're doing. >> Well, the central banks are buying aggressively uh but they're also repatriating gold, meaning they're they're they're getting it back uh mostly out of the US, back into their own vaults. >> Um what what have you heard about this? Like what what are the latest trends there? >> Right. Well, France did it just recently, right? That was what everyone heard. And it started in 2017, Kai, with the Bundes Bank saying, "Give us back our damn gold. We've been trying to get it for three years." Shortly after that happened, to your point, Bank of Austria, Hungary, Turkey, Poland, the Czech National Bank, the Dutch National Bank, they all said the same thing. And it boils down, look for for and not only that, India took back all their gold or almost all of it from uh the Bank of England. the the reason all these countries left their gold at the New York Federal Reserve andor the Bank of England was to direct access to the ComX and the LBMA, Western Rule of Law, uh you know, the the the convenience of being able to transact on those two exchanges. These countries are saying, you know, nuts to that, we will forgive the or or forego rather the ease of transaction in in favor of lack of counterparty risk. And that's a big indictment. and and I've been talking about that for the last several years really since since the Bundes Bank did this and then all the central banks you know it's interesting too the Bundes Bank did this in 2017 those other six or seven or eight European banks did it and then the next year those banks bought more gold as a group uh together as they did in the 60 years previously combined and since that year which was 2018 they have not stopped buying gold and largely to your point repatriating it and this is my point about why They're selling treasuries and buying gold because there is no counterparty risk. When a system that is is as robust as ours is is based solely on trust, when the trust begins to fray and fragment, these are the things you would expect to see. And you do it in a proactive manner before it's too late and the door gets shut. So they're like, you know what, we'll we'll deal with the lack of convenience. We want it in our own possession because we don't want to see a repeat in 1971 where they say sorry the gold windows closed and what we hold is ours. Sorry. >> Maybe maybe just to sum it up or summarize it. So what you're saying it's not really like currency driven meanings like we're trying to get out of the US dollar. It's really trust driven like do we trust the US? Um does it have you seen an acceleration perhaps now that the new uh government is in charge in in the US? Does that play a role or has that been a trend ever since um since let's say 2022 since we kicked Russia out of the Swiss system and is that detached from the personality in the White House? >> Well, I think it's has a large part of it. I used to say under the previous administration, our actions were too stupid to be stupid. When you look at what happened then, people were looking at our country and saying, you know, they go around and and and and do these things with sanctions. And then you look at everything this country was founded upon, lawlessness, uh the question with the immigration and the open borders, the judicial system, the question of it being two-tiered, the you know the uh the the the entire system which which was falling apart at the seams. Um I think people looked at the United States said what the heck happened to that wonderful country? And so yes, it's been a lack of trust. This has been ongoing. But the difference is this administration to your point is certainly a lot more I guess you could say aggressive in in terms of um getting their point across when they are issuing all these tariffs that really aren't tariffs. They're sanctions masquerading as tariffs. I think it sends a clear signal that um you know counterparty risk is something that really you want to to eliminate with an entity that is as strong and aggressive as the United States and an entity that you don't really trust anymore. Not just on a political or geopolitical level, maybe even deeper than that, a a actual structural level or fundamental level of of all of the things that made the United States great. many of them have kind of um been blurred by by the actions of the last two administrations from a global perspective. Look, I think it's important that people have an open mind. I am very much a a patriot, but I I cite uh Iraq very often. You know, we went into Iraq 23 years ago under false pretenses. We never did find those weapons of mass destruction. We destroyed their country. We toppled the regime and we're still there today. versus you look at what Russia and Ukraine have done. And I'm not making any judgment on either war, but whatever Putin did for Putin's purposes. Is it really for the United States to be the judge, jury, and the executioner? They did what they think thought they had to do, and they were kicked out of Swift. Their allies who traded with them were sanctioned. Um, you know, you can't trade with them. They're they're, you know, they're on the black ball list. It's okay for us to make those decisions, but there are no ramifications when we make decisions that are arguably weward from others perspectives. So, I think all of these things together really are are what is driving the move away from holding US treasuries, less US dollars and more US treasuries. >> You you just touched on a couple things that all converge in Asia, meaning in China mostly. Um, let's talk about the role of Asia and China in particular. U we have the big meeting of course happening in a in a few days about what is it 3 days from now. Uh President Xi and President Trump are meeting in in Beijing. Um what what is the role of Asia in general? You just touched on treasuries. He touched on gold. Um what kind of power or what are they trying to achieve like what I'm trying to understand is here like the role of gold for from an Asian perspective. Yes, you don't have the counterparty risk. you get out of the dollar system. But is there an ulterior motive perhaps? And what should we be expecting from the meeting now? >> Well, I think the ulterior motive is exactly what I've talked about for several years. And you see it in two trade deals that were just done between China and Brazil and China and the UAE. China and the UAE just made several trade deals, 24 25 of them based on parallel trade channels that are settled in Yuan instead of dollars. And the biggest ones in my mind were the petroleum for yuan or renimi and the ddollarization of financial channels. They came out and and specifically said this, including one that I had to look up. Didn't quite understand what they said. Non-oil trade at the billion yuan level. What does that mean? That means they're talking um that the relationship is expanding massively beyond just oil and and and the scale is becoming very large. So, you know, you have these new energy mega projects along with very, you know, very other ambitious uh goals that they're doing in AI and infrastructure. And look, for for decades, um, Kai, all global trade, especially energy, flowed through the US dollar system. And the more trade that settles outside the dollar system, uh, the the less the the global demand exists for dollars, but more so for treasuries. And when you have all of those dollars, you have to recycle them into treasuries. That was part of the petro dollar deal. Why hold them earning nothing when you can put them in treasuries earning a yield. They're very liquid. But all of that recycling into treasuries is what has kept the interest rates low in this country and asset prices high and the goods we buy around the country and Walmart and Target very cheap. And I think this is you know uh one reason why many countries are are simultaneously increasing their gold reserves because gold becomes the neutral reserve collateral in a world that is becoming multipolar instead of unipolar and and China understands this. Uh and and so they also just dropped 6.1 billion into Brazil in one year. That's more than any country on earth. And and they did it in in over 20 Brazilian states. And you know, Brazil is very resourcerich. So, not only does China control 90% of all the refining of rare earths, they're locking up the actual rare earths themselves in nickel and and in um uh uh what nickel and copper and uh graphite and not just rare earth, they're doing u um >> all sorts of stuff. But all of it. And but that's the point is that they're going around the world in a cooperative fashion and they're securing resources for the future. And so outside of the dollar settlement system, this is all happening as you're seeing these BRICS nations increasingly talking about trade settlement outside the dollar system. As an example, China signed up through their SIP system, the cross center bank payment system. all the countries in Southeast Asia known as the Asian ASAN uh countries there 800 million people twice the population of the United States and uh China's largest trading partner by far now they will be trading on the SIP system meaning a system that is not compliant with swift or the dollar so meaning they're trading their own currencies building their own monetary future and ecosystem instead of strengthening ours and balances in gold now how do they do that the Shanghai Metals Exchange is expanding their vault builting structure. They built they built the first one in Hong Kong, which is important because when gold leaves China, it has to leave it through Hong Kong. Now, there are reports that the the next one in Saudi Arabia is now complete and operational. They they intend to put one in the United Arab Emirates, in Switzerland, and then throughout the entire Belt Road where all of these vaults will connect with the existing vaults in Singapore, uh in in in Moscow. Um now they built a new one in St. Petersburg and the bricks vault ultimately and all of these vaults which they'll trade local currencies across embridge and sips outside of the purview of the swift settle in balances in gold and this is exactly what they are intending to do in my mind exactly why they're accumulating gold. Gold will replace the treasury and everyone's local currency will be the preferred me mode of trade amongst these countries. The dollar is not going to die, but less dollars in settlement chips away at the settlement system. Less treasuries needed for less dollars chips away at the reserve status. And so little by little, this is going to have a major impact and gold is right at the center of it. >> I was just going to ask a follow-up like if if you add gold to the system here or back a currency even partially, isn't that the automatic new world reserve currency automatically? It's just because of a trust thing and just because it's gold backed. Shouldn't that be the new norm then automatically? >> Well, so I don't know that they're going to back the currency with gold. I mean, China kind of already has done that. Why? Because right now they have made their yuan immediately convertible into gold through the Shanghai exchange. Now, you don't have to convert the dollars first. It doesn't mean it's backed. It just means you can convert it seamlessly. So, as an example, uh we'll use Saudi Arabia as an example. they sell their oil or the United Arab Emirates who no longer is in uh OPEC who is a main member of BRICS who is one of the four main members of the Embridge platform. They trade their oil to China for the yuan which trades over sips or embbridge which is not compatible with the west. They send it back to the Shanghai Metals Exchange in Hong Kong and take the metal right out instead of holding yuan. But the they are building a Shanghai metals exchange in Dubai. that is on the agenda. So be in their own backyard. There's already one in Saudi Arabia and throughout the whole belt road and and so yes in essence that is what it will be. They are they are focusing on the one shortcoming of our system and that is eroding trust and if you have transparency through a blockchain system with immutability in the in in redemption in gold yes you are very close to that. Now it doesn't have to be completely gold backed just gold redeemable without switching into dollars first. So what is what's the difference? The difference is that you have greater monetary latitude if it's not tied back backing it. Redeemability is probably a little bit more latitude in terms of their monetary policy. >> No, it's it's it's an interesting time right now because maybe we'll throw India now into into the mix here as well. >> By the way, Kai, you know, interesting may live in interesting times. That's a Chinese curse. Don't forget that >> it. Yeah. Well, we feel cur Now I feel cursed. >> Now I feel it. No, but but Andy, let's talk about the iron bricks. Let's talk about India um and how the the narrative that just came out of Delhi New or New Delhi here just just yesterday I believe it was or maybe 48 hours ago but Modi said uh in in context of the oil crisis not to buy any more gold and to stop spending money that you you know abroad and keep keep the money in country. How is that changing maybe the trajectory or the momentum of it all? Like is it pushing back timelines? Um what kind of signal is that sending? >> I I don't think they'll listen to him to be honest with you. Um you know I I think when your leader says that it has less implications. I think it just strengthens the reason why you would want to own gold to protect you against a devaluing currency. All currencies inherently are meant to die as Dr. Fran Pick once said. So they understand it's in their DNA. Now, you know, Eric Young, uh, who is someone who I respect a lot on on on X, he came out and said now he he's not giving any sources, but he's hearing that the countries in the Gulf are are selling treasury reserves to buy gold and silver, emphasis on silver. And maybe that's what we saw in India to emphasis on silver. They have been rumored to have bought more silver than anyone in the world over the last several years, over 900 million ounces. They understand silver very, very, very well. But I wouldn't put much stock in what Moody had to say. I think it it's just again an indictment of all fiat currencies. And I think ask any any average Indian citizen who understands gold and silver, it's in their DNA. They would they would own it, prefer to own it over over currency any day. And when your president comes out and says that or your prime minister, whoever it is, says that, I think it deep down only reinforces the reason you would want to do it to begin with. No, it's Yeah, I'm curious like the the reaction like in in the markets was really interesting to see as well there because gold barely reacted. Maybe it was even or it was somewhat flat yesterday in the trading session, but silver spiked 7%. Um, is that just headline driven based on what we're seeing out of India or is there another factor at play Andy? >> I don't think it's headline driven at all. I mean, look, there was a time when the folks at Gatada, who I always whenever I get a chance to throw out a shout out to Bill Murphy and Chris Powell, anyone who owns gold ow owns them a debt of gratitude and they have my respect. They always used to say gold and silver will never be allowed to move more than 2% in a day. And that's true. It never did. I've been doing this for over 35 years. It never did. A 7% move is an outsized move. And it goes handinhand with what Bank of America, their lead metals analyst, was talking about recently when he said gold could go between $130 and $39 an ounce by the end of this year based upon the gold silver ratio, which is way out of whack. Well, what you saw yesterday is gold move up less than a half percent and silver move up 7%. That is kind of the trajectory of what he is talking about. But look when when China imports more silver in the first two or first 90 days of the year than they ever have in the history of the country as the price was being decimated when India's been buying it like I said close to 900 million ounces over the last 3 years um when silver is being taken off the comx exchange and levels that no one has ever seen before in February as the price was being destroyed here in the United States. Well what happened on Comx about 26 million ounces were delivered. Now, that's not a big delivery month. It was not a primary delivery month. They are um it would be um January, not February, March, not April, you know, um these kinds of things. And so, every other month, but 25 26 million ounces were delivered in February, but 39 million ounces Kai got on trucks and drove away. That's 2.8 million pounds. Who in God's green earth took possession of 2.8 8 million pounds of silver here in the United States in New York, put them on semi-truckss and drove away. But it's the same thing we're seeing. Price is a tool of misdirection. And I think that that silver is from a from a standpoint of asymmetric um measurement. Low downside, high upside. I don't think there's a a better buy on the planet. But you could talk about things like, you know, China, which was a net exporter through last year, is now a net importer this year. They're not exporting anything. We remember they they pushed back to uh the United States classifying silver as a critical mineral and said, "Fine, we're not going to export that much." But most people missed what they said a few months earlier in November as the second largest producer in the world said, "We're not going to send any of our domestic production out into the marketplace outside of China." And then you look at their restrictions on sulfuric acid exports which is beginning to show itself in fertilizer as Mosaic a big company said we have to massively change our guidance for this year as fertilizer is becoming too difficult to make because of the cost of of sulfuric acid but sulfuric acid is also needed copiously in the production and mining of copper. When you look at silver, uh, only about 20% of the silver mined last year came from companies like First Majestic, solely looking for silver. A majority of it came from byproduct mining, largely of copper, zinc, and lead too, but mostly copper. Well, if you if the sulfuric acid doesn't allow you to mine copper quite as well, nowhere near as well or at all, then what's going to happen to silver production? And these copper mines, look, they don't have any incentive price-wise to go looking for silver. they stumble across it when they're mining copper. All of these things are starting to come into play. The massive deliveries that we're seeing all around the globe um is certainly betraying the price of it all. And look, the pullback that we saw in in in the beginning of the year, the Bank of International Settlements, the most powerful bank in the world, came out and said, "Look, this was this was structural, not fundamental." Two reasons why it collapsed. Number one, at the end of every year, the beginning of of January, you have a rebalancing of the levered ETFs. And that time frame, the first two weeks of January is notorious for volatility in commodity markets because of the ETF rebalancing. Now, think of what happened up to January. Every week after week after week after week, silver was flying. They needed to rebalance those ETFs, right? So that means they sell ET uh silver within the leverage ETF in order to get their their balance sheet in line with their perspectus. You could have bet dollars to donuts this was going to happen. Well, at the same time, the CME group in their infinite wisdom in six week period from beginning of December to mid January, right when you wouldn't want to do this, jacked up margin rates, that is the collateral that needs to be held to either speculate or to hedge a position on COMX 300%. So between the massively rising cost of margin massively from roughly $15,000 to hedge a $5,000 contract on December 1st to $54,000 for that same contract just in a margin account uh 6 weeks later along with the rebalancing made everyone selling beget selling beget selling beget selling price collapses and then you see China come in and scoop up more than they ever have in history. 39 million ounces leave the comx. We're seeing the biggest, most sophisticated, wellunded money on the planet who does not use margin look at any pullback as an opportunity to get longer. And here again, price is a tool of misdirection. They used a they use this a synthetic orchestrated means of raising margins and rebalancing ETFs to to hammer the price. And then the big money says, "Haha, thank you." grab grab grap and grabs it all and puts it on their in their coffers at subsidized prices and no one's even looking or paying attention because they're all licking their wounds about silver that absolutely collapsed and crushed them. That's what you call misdirection, my friend, and it's everywhere. >> Talking about misdirection, one group that is really good at it as well as the US government, right? H how are they involved in all of this? Project Vault comes to mind here. 12 billion dollars to to start a strategic stockpile as well. Have we seen any buying yet out of out of the US government in that regard? Has anything like materialized? >> Well, we they haven't talked about it other than talking about it, but they haven't talked about purchases, but we've seen literally since Trump won the election every month deliveries that defy logic. No, less than one 1% of all contracts my entire 35 year career stood for delivery, guy. I mean, no one's these contracts were used to speculate or to hedge production or hedge an inventory like mine where the gold in my warehouse is offset with the gold on COMX so that I'm market neutral. No one stood for delivery and now the amount of delivery that we are seeing is off the charts. And this is the the only question that the media has completely and totally missed. Where the hell have they been? Who's standing for delivery every month and billions and billions and billions and billions and billions and billions and billions of dollars every month? Who's doing it? Doesn't mean it's all leaving the comx, although a lot has been lately. Who is standing for delivery when nobody ever did? Who's got nine figures to spend in silver and gold every month and stand for delivery, which is as unusual. I live in in Boca Ratan where I'll see you here in July at Rick's rules conference. You know how hot it gets here in July. I live on a golf course. If I woke up July 1st to 4 feet of snow on my back in my backyard, which is the first tea box of the golf course I live on, I wouldn't call my sister and say, "Send me my two snowmobiles that are in your garage in Minnesota, please, cuz I'm going to go snowmmoiling here in Florida." It's an anomaly. And the amount of metal that has been delivered every single month since Trump won the election, going on 19 straight months, it's interesting because that's how many months the the Chinese have been buying gold um month over month over month, even though they probably been buying longer than that. they just don't report it. But the bottom line is since he won the election, every month we've seen these kinds of way outsized deliveries uh outliers. Yet the media has no inclination to to dig into this or even mention it. To me, it betrays everything else they're talking about. When the most well-informed traders on the planet who happen to have more money than anyone at nine figures a pop every single month into billions of dollars, who's standing for delivery? Where is it going? And what are they bringing it home for? Instead of trusting the system, here's that word trust again. They would rather stand for delivery, control it themselves instead of trusting the paper promises that the ComX offers. So yeah, I I don't know. I think that's the biggest the biggest red flag of all is who the hell is standing for delivery every single month unabated without without stop. You you shared some really interesting insights here um Andy but what is maybe as a last question as well here what is maybe the one thing investors should pay very close attention to if it's just one metric one chart one statistic what should we be paying attention be paying attention >> if I were going to pay attention just one thing it would be the yield on the 10-year Treasury um you know the the Federal Reserve in theory doesn't have the ability to control the 10-year Treasury that they control the front end of the curve this is one of the reasons why I think the Genius Act is coming into play because remember anytime money moves from next January forward, it'll move via stable coin on a blockchain network backed by 90-day or less US Treasury. So when you worry about the new Fed chair being hawkish, don't be the anytime money moves since from next January forward, it will be synthetically pegged to short-term treasuries, which will nail the front end of the curve down to the to the floor. Again, they won't have the ability to do much with interest rates. It's almost killing one half of their dual mandate. uh the back end is different and ask yourself why would anybody want to buy a 10-year Treasury that is paying 4% when inflation and money creation and and the CP lie is a lie. We all know it. Inflation is much higher than they say. Ask John Williams of Shadow Stats. He'll say add an 11 to the number that they quote. No one would want to buy a 10-year Treasury. On top of the fact that it can be sanctioned and taken from you when gold has 10xed it over the last two years, doubled it over the last 25 years. there's no incentive to hold 10-year treasuries. And as the yield goes higher, as more and more countries dreurize, that's a new word. Um then yeah, that's going to affect the entire system, stocks, bonds, real estate, the banks that hold treasuries, the insurance companies, the pensions, they're all inversely correlated to that moment. That was originally the Claus Schwab great, you know, that moment where, you know, the the global reset where you'll own nothing and be happy where the whole system collapses by rising interest rates. Uh because it's all overlevered. And this is the problem that happens when you allow the central bankers to control interest rates. It it creates massive distortions in asset prices, misallocations of resource and capital. And when the interest rates are set free rather than managed through things like yield curve control or or or shadow entities in the Cayman Islands buying all these treasuries, you really believe it's the Cayman Islands or could it actually be a shell company backed by the Fed? I'm just saying. I mean, there's skepticism should be employed here. When rates move higher and asset prices find that symmetry, that's the scary part because everything everything in this country is wickedly inversely correlated and wickedly levered to an increase in in interest rates. We saw what happened when it hit 5% silicone and signature poof. Uh if it goes past 5% uh you know Katy bar the doors and that would be the one thing that I would watch more than anything. And Peter Schiff will tell you he's smart smarter than me. He says, "Yeah, prices, uh, inflation's going way higher and interest rates are going way higher." If he's right, and I assume he is, I I suspect he is, uh, that would be the one the one thing that I would watch more than anything, and that would be that would be the one thing that would make people want to maybe re-evaluate even their best laid plans. >> Fantastic, Andy. Bit scary at the end, but uh, we we'll we'll go with it. I usually like ending on a positive note, but I think it's all positive for Gold and Silver here, so we'll take that. Um, all all roads lead to gold and silver. I can't get away from it. And >> well, let me give you one bit of positivity cloaked in negativity. For those of you, and I'm sure most people have watched the um the movie The Shaw Shank Redemption, when you create as much debt as we have for as long as we have, um that's the tube of crap that Andy Defrain had to crawl through. You got to get through that. But when you get to the other end, maybe there is reason for optimism. And if we were talking longer, I would give you my reasons why I think there is reason to be optimistic. But it doesn't change the fact that we got to crawl through that tube first. We got to go through the difficult times to get to the other side. And and I think that's the reason to hold gold and silver. Part of the reason to hold gold and silver and also part of the reason to understand that there is reason to be optimistic, but before we get there, we got to we got to go through the tough times that mathematically are inevitable. So I guess we'll see what happens. You own gold and silver not just to survive but maybe to sur to thrive and get you to the other side where optimism prevails where you will be able to take advantage of things like si singledigit price to earnings ratios on blue chip stocks or the real estate you've always wanted at pennies on the dollar when interest rates find symmetry with asset prices that are way distorted right now there is reason doesn't mean we're going to get through the tough times easily but once we're through it yeah reason to be optimistic >> yeah we'll we'll record a positivity episode in Boca Raton at the the home conference. So looking forward to that. Andy, in the meantime, where can we send our audience to follow your work. >> So we have Miles Franklin Media. Thank you for that. That's our YouTube channel. We're up to about 135,000 subscribers in a very short time. Thank you for watching. Any of you that do. And for those who want prices here in the United States on metal that we don't publish, we only allow purchasing up to 10 grand on our website, info@sfranklin.com. We'll send you our price list. It's updated all the time. it'll be as good or better than anyone in the country. Any questions you've heard on this podcast or any that you have on IAS or anything, let us know. You know, I appreciate this the shameless plug, Kai. And you're one of the best guys in the industry that I've met in 35 years. I always love coming on your show. You're well prepared. You're well thought out. You're a gentleman. And thank you very much for having me. I appreciate it very, very much. Look forward to seeing you in July. And one of these days, we're going to get that beer we keep talking about. >> It's It's long overdue. It's long overdue. So, I'm really looking forward to it. You're making me blush, Andy. It was very kind of you. Much appreciated. It's always great to have you on the show. So, wealth of knowledge. Really appreciate it, Andy. Thank you so much. And everybody else, thank you so much for tuning in. As always, a wonderful discussion here with Andy Sheman about gold and silver. If you agree, if you disagree, put a comment down below. Really curious what your thoughts are. What do you think is going to happen in China this weekend? Really curious to hear your thoughts. And uh I've asked an audience yesterday at a presentation I gave, do you think silver is monetary or industrial? put that down below as well. I'm curious because I read all the comments. I shouldn't. It's not always healthy, but I do. So, um, tremendously appreciate you watching and, uh, stay tuned for more and don't let the emotions run your investments for you. Take care out there.
“There’s No Better Buy on the Planet” Stark GOLD & SILVER Warning | Andy Schectman
Summary
Transcript
What is the role of gold today? India's premier Modi just told his his his people not to buy any gold for the next 12 months and and gold is reacting very much to headlines coming out of the Fed, inflation headlines. Has the has the function of gold. Has the role of gold changed? And of course, we'll take a very close look at silver because Modi only mentioned gold. He didn't mention silver and silver shot up 7% yesterday. Has the role of silver changed? Is it a monetary metal again or is it just industrial? We'll talk about all of that with our guest Andy Sheckchman. He's the president over at Miles Franklin. I'm really looking forward to having him back on here in a few short seconds. But first, I need to remind you, hit that like and subscribe button. It helps with the algorithm. It helps reach a wider audience. It helps educate more people about what is happening really out there in the world. So, thanks so much for doing that. Now, Andy, it is great to have you back on the program. It's good to see you again, my friend. >> Kai, always great to see you, brother. Appreciate it very very much. >> Yeah, really looking forward to the next 30 minutes with you Andy. We have lots to discuss and I really want to start with my opening question here in the intro is like what is the role of gold today. Has it changed? >> No, it hasn't changed to me. Um, gold is wealth, plain and simply. It's outlived two world wars, German hyperinflation, the Great Depression, and you know, like the World Economic Forum paper that we saw not too long ago speaking of the next crisis being a poly crisis. The idea is simply society faces multiple overlapping crisises at once. Crisis crisises at once. And we're seeing that everywhere. Um, gold is wealth and it's outside of the system which if held uh in your own possession has no counterparty risk. I think those are the things that are accentuating the demand for gold right now. >> 100%. And uh like I mentioned like gold is reacting very much to headlines and uh maybe in in a contradictory way as well because you'd think okay inflation is rising wouldn't you want to own more gold but gold is going trending down. What why is that Andy? That's that is a a bit puzzling quite honestly and we've discussed this here on the channel before but I'm curious what your take on that is and how you see it trade. >> That narrative is actually crap. I mean pardon my French but you know the theory is well if inflation is rising well then you know the Fed can't be dovish. They have to be hawkish. And evidently gold only moves up when interest rates fall down. But let's not forget that a couple years ago, you had gold at 1,800 bucks, 2022ish, uh, and the federal funds rate pretty much nailed to the floor at zero 2021, 2022. And we watched interest rates move up 450 basis points in the shortest amount of time ever. And lo and behold, gold has nearly tripled since then. So that narrative is convenient for the talking heads when they, you know, when it when it fits their argument. They ignore it when it doesn't. In essence, what it truly is is as what it's always been. It's been the central bank and excuse me, the the central bank and the and through the commercial banks ability to suppress the paper price. But what is breaking the paper price guy is as they go and do this as they hold it down. We see countries like China who purchased 160,000 ounces of gold in March. They added another 260,000 in in April. That's almost nine times the monthly purchase amount from uh year-over-year from last year to this year. And this is when the price was getting its teeth kicked in. After 18 consecutive months of adding gold, you would think people would understand that price is nothing but a tool of misdirection. The narrative that we are being told is hogwash as the biggest money in the world stands for delivery. And it's not just China. We're seeing it elsewhere, but they're a good example of of what it is I'm talking about. By the way, I know we're going to talk about silver, but in in February and March, after the price was destroyed in silver, China bought more silver and imported more silver in those months, the largest ever in February, and then the larger still setting an all-time record in March of silver, more than they've ever imported in the history of the country as the price was being decimated. Price is a tool of misdirection and the big money, the sophisticated money who understands this, who's been using the western suppression against us for a long time by standing for delivery, it's accelerating. And nowhere do you see that better than in the import export numbers into China. >> Yeah. World Gold Council report for Q1 stated 244 tons bought um despite the record prices. As you as you pointed out, Mark, the the central banks purely ignored the fact of price. they're somewhat price agnostic. Um like why are they doing that? Like have have we gotten more like intel perhaps on the reasons why they're doing it? Have they shed more light? Um a few months in now has have the central bank commissioners or officers come out and say, "Hey, this is why we're doing it." Have they put a clear message out? >> I don't know why they would ever tell you the truth, but I found the most illuminating comment come from a guy named Adam Gapinsky, who is the head of the Polish National Bank. And you know, Poland's bought more gold than just about anybody. Now, I'm going to I don't think I have this. No, I don't. I'm going to paraphrase this pretty pretty close. They asked him, Adam, why do why is Poland buying so much gold? And he said two things that really freaked me out. One, he said, you know, he he spoke of a new world order, a new financial order that where gold will play a prominent role. And that to me was very alarming in and of itself, where a central banker talks about a new a new system, a new world order. But the most startling comment that he made and I put this on the heels of when uh Secretary Bassant talked about his concern about AI and and quantum computing and what it the security threats to the banking system. He came out and said Glinsky the the head of the Polish National Bank and and this is pretty close to what he said verbatim. He said Poland buys gold because in the event that someone pulls the plug on a global financial system that is largely based on electronic accounting records, gold will allow this country to remain stable and solid from an economic standpoint. More or less, that's what he said. In other words, to hear a central banker say when someone shuts off the power to the global financial system that runs on electric accounting records, it was very, very eye opening to me. But the real reason, Kai, it's counterparty risk again. When when we crossed the the Rubicon and and and froze the Russian forex reserves, we kicked them out of Swift. Well, that's a hard hard line to come back from. And you look at the fiscal irresponsibility of the United States where creating debt uh at a at a pace no one's ever seen before. watering down the currency, watering down the value of the treasuries, and then if you're on the wrong side of the US agenda, actually having those treasuries frozen and or taken from you. These are the reasons that we are seeing a move away in my opinion from the treasury market. It's less about ddollarization. Okay, so dollars are needed to run the world and more about, if it were a word, dregurization. And as countries sell treasuries to buy gold, like China has cut their treasury holdings in half is massively buying gold. You look at the performance of the 10-year Treasury versus gold over 25 years. The Treasury market has performed 50% or gold has doubled. The Treasury market, look at it. The last two years, it's over 10xed it with no counterparty risk. So its performance is better. It has no counterparty risk. Uh and and I think that is beginning to to you know become very evident in in a world where our indebtedness is not getting better at all. And the Congressional Budget Office is talking about $2 trillion interest payments within the next several years as the debt continues to grow. And that's called the Ferguson law. When a country spends more money on debt service than they do on their uh military, they cease to become a superpower over time. and and that's in in essence the road that we're heading down. I hope it doesn't happen that way, but these would be the reasons that I would think that the central banks behind the scenes are are doing what they're doing. >> Well, the central banks are buying aggressively uh but they're also repatriating gold, meaning they're they're they're getting it back uh mostly out of the US, back into their own vaults. >> Um what what have you heard about this? Like what what are the latest trends there? >> Right. Well, France did it just recently, right? That was what everyone heard. And it started in 2017, Kai, with the Bundes Bank saying, "Give us back our damn gold. We've been trying to get it for three years." Shortly after that happened, to your point, Bank of Austria, Hungary, Turkey, Poland, the Czech National Bank, the Dutch National Bank, they all said the same thing. And it boils down, look for for and not only that, India took back all their gold or almost all of it from uh the Bank of England. the the reason all these countries left their gold at the New York Federal Reserve andor the Bank of England was to direct access to the ComX and the LBMA, Western Rule of Law, uh you know, the the the convenience of being able to transact on those two exchanges. These countries are saying, you know, nuts to that, we will forgive the or or forego rather the ease of transaction in in favor of lack of counterparty risk. And that's a big indictment. and and I've been talking about that for the last several years really since since the Bundes Bank did this and then all the central banks you know it's interesting too the Bundes Bank did this in 2017 those other six or seven or eight European banks did it and then the next year those banks bought more gold as a group uh together as they did in the 60 years previously combined and since that year which was 2018 they have not stopped buying gold and largely to your point repatriating it and this is my point about why They're selling treasuries and buying gold because there is no counterparty risk. When a system that is is as robust as ours is is based solely on trust, when the trust begins to fray and fragment, these are the things you would expect to see. And you do it in a proactive manner before it's too late and the door gets shut. So they're like, you know what, we'll we'll deal with the lack of convenience. We want it in our own possession because we don't want to see a repeat in 1971 where they say sorry the gold windows closed and what we hold is ours. Sorry. >> Maybe maybe just to sum it up or summarize it. So what you're saying it's not really like currency driven meanings like we're trying to get out of the US dollar. It's really trust driven like do we trust the US? Um does it have you seen an acceleration perhaps now that the new uh government is in charge in in the US? Does that play a role or has that been a trend ever since um since let's say 2022 since we kicked Russia out of the Swiss system and is that detached from the personality in the White House? >> Well, I think it's has a large part of it. I used to say under the previous administration, our actions were too stupid to be stupid. When you look at what happened then, people were looking at our country and saying, you know, they go around and and and and do these things with sanctions. And then you look at everything this country was founded upon, lawlessness, uh the question with the immigration and the open borders, the judicial system, the question of it being two-tiered, the you know the uh the the the entire system which which was falling apart at the seams. Um I think people looked at the United States said what the heck happened to that wonderful country? And so yes, it's been a lack of trust. This has been ongoing. But the difference is this administration to your point is certainly a lot more I guess you could say aggressive in in terms of um getting their point across when they are issuing all these tariffs that really aren't tariffs. They're sanctions masquerading as tariffs. I think it sends a clear signal that um you know counterparty risk is something that really you want to to eliminate with an entity that is as strong and aggressive as the United States and an entity that you don't really trust anymore. Not just on a political or geopolitical level, maybe even deeper than that, a a actual structural level or fundamental level of of all of the things that made the United States great. many of them have kind of um been blurred by by the actions of the last two administrations from a global perspective. Look, I think it's important that people have an open mind. I am very much a a patriot, but I I cite uh Iraq very often. You know, we went into Iraq 23 years ago under false pretenses. We never did find those weapons of mass destruction. We destroyed their country. We toppled the regime and we're still there today. versus you look at what Russia and Ukraine have done. And I'm not making any judgment on either war, but whatever Putin did for Putin's purposes. Is it really for the United States to be the judge, jury, and the executioner? They did what they think thought they had to do, and they were kicked out of Swift. Their allies who traded with them were sanctioned. Um, you know, you can't trade with them. They're they're, you know, they're on the black ball list. It's okay for us to make those decisions, but there are no ramifications when we make decisions that are arguably weward from others perspectives. So, I think all of these things together really are are what is driving the move away from holding US treasuries, less US dollars and more US treasuries. >> You you just touched on a couple things that all converge in Asia, meaning in China mostly. Um, let's talk about the role of Asia and China in particular. U we have the big meeting of course happening in a in a few days about what is it 3 days from now. Uh President Xi and President Trump are meeting in in Beijing. Um what what is the role of Asia in general? You just touched on treasuries. He touched on gold. Um what kind of power or what are they trying to achieve like what I'm trying to understand is here like the role of gold for from an Asian perspective. Yes, you don't have the counterparty risk. you get out of the dollar system. But is there an ulterior motive perhaps? And what should we be expecting from the meeting now? >> Well, I think the ulterior motive is exactly what I've talked about for several years. And you see it in two trade deals that were just done between China and Brazil and China and the UAE. China and the UAE just made several trade deals, 24 25 of them based on parallel trade channels that are settled in Yuan instead of dollars. And the biggest ones in my mind were the petroleum for yuan or renimi and the ddollarization of financial channels. They came out and and specifically said this, including one that I had to look up. Didn't quite understand what they said. Non-oil trade at the billion yuan level. What does that mean? That means they're talking um that the relationship is expanding massively beyond just oil and and and the scale is becoming very large. So, you know, you have these new energy mega projects along with very, you know, very other ambitious uh goals that they're doing in AI and infrastructure. And look, for for decades, um, Kai, all global trade, especially energy, flowed through the US dollar system. And the more trade that settles outside the dollar system, uh, the the less the the global demand exists for dollars, but more so for treasuries. And when you have all of those dollars, you have to recycle them into treasuries. That was part of the petro dollar deal. Why hold them earning nothing when you can put them in treasuries earning a yield. They're very liquid. But all of that recycling into treasuries is what has kept the interest rates low in this country and asset prices high and the goods we buy around the country and Walmart and Target very cheap. And I think this is you know uh one reason why many countries are are simultaneously increasing their gold reserves because gold becomes the neutral reserve collateral in a world that is becoming multipolar instead of unipolar and and China understands this. Uh and and so they also just dropped 6.1 billion into Brazil in one year. That's more than any country on earth. And and they did it in in over 20 Brazilian states. And you know, Brazil is very resourcerich. So, not only does China control 90% of all the refining of rare earths, they're locking up the actual rare earths themselves in nickel and and in um uh uh what nickel and copper and uh graphite and not just rare earth, they're doing u um >> all sorts of stuff. But all of it. And but that's the point is that they're going around the world in a cooperative fashion and they're securing resources for the future. And so outside of the dollar settlement system, this is all happening as you're seeing these BRICS nations increasingly talking about trade settlement outside the dollar system. As an example, China signed up through their SIP system, the cross center bank payment system. all the countries in Southeast Asia known as the Asian ASAN uh countries there 800 million people twice the population of the United States and uh China's largest trading partner by far now they will be trading on the SIP system meaning a system that is not compliant with swift or the dollar so meaning they're trading their own currencies building their own monetary future and ecosystem instead of strengthening ours and balances in gold now how do they do that the Shanghai Metals Exchange is expanding their vault builting structure. They built they built the first one in Hong Kong, which is important because when gold leaves China, it has to leave it through Hong Kong. Now, there are reports that the the next one in Saudi Arabia is now complete and operational. They they intend to put one in the United Arab Emirates, in Switzerland, and then throughout the entire Belt Road where all of these vaults will connect with the existing vaults in Singapore, uh in in in Moscow. Um now they built a new one in St. Petersburg and the bricks vault ultimately and all of these vaults which they'll trade local currencies across embridge and sips outside of the purview of the swift settle in balances in gold and this is exactly what they are intending to do in my mind exactly why they're accumulating gold. Gold will replace the treasury and everyone's local currency will be the preferred me mode of trade amongst these countries. The dollar is not going to die, but less dollars in settlement chips away at the settlement system. Less treasuries needed for less dollars chips away at the reserve status. And so little by little, this is going to have a major impact and gold is right at the center of it. >> I was just going to ask a follow-up like if if you add gold to the system here or back a currency even partially, isn't that the automatic new world reserve currency automatically? It's just because of a trust thing and just because it's gold backed. Shouldn't that be the new norm then automatically? >> Well, so I don't know that they're going to back the currency with gold. I mean, China kind of already has done that. Why? Because right now they have made their yuan immediately convertible into gold through the Shanghai exchange. Now, you don't have to convert the dollars first. It doesn't mean it's backed. It just means you can convert it seamlessly. So, as an example, uh we'll use Saudi Arabia as an example. they sell their oil or the United Arab Emirates who no longer is in uh OPEC who is a main member of BRICS who is one of the four main members of the Embridge platform. They trade their oil to China for the yuan which trades over sips or embbridge which is not compatible with the west. They send it back to the Shanghai Metals Exchange in Hong Kong and take the metal right out instead of holding yuan. But the they are building a Shanghai metals exchange in Dubai. that is on the agenda. So be in their own backyard. There's already one in Saudi Arabia and throughout the whole belt road and and so yes in essence that is what it will be. They are they are focusing on the one shortcoming of our system and that is eroding trust and if you have transparency through a blockchain system with immutability in the in in redemption in gold yes you are very close to that. Now it doesn't have to be completely gold backed just gold redeemable without switching into dollars first. So what is what's the difference? The difference is that you have greater monetary latitude if it's not tied back backing it. Redeemability is probably a little bit more latitude in terms of their monetary policy. >> No, it's it's it's an interesting time right now because maybe we'll throw India now into into the mix here as well. >> By the way, Kai, you know, interesting may live in interesting times. That's a Chinese curse. Don't forget that >> it. Yeah. Well, we feel cur Now I feel cursed. >> Now I feel it. No, but but Andy, let's talk about the iron bricks. Let's talk about India um and how the the narrative that just came out of Delhi New or New Delhi here just just yesterday I believe it was or maybe 48 hours ago but Modi said uh in in context of the oil crisis not to buy any more gold and to stop spending money that you you know abroad and keep keep the money in country. How is that changing maybe the trajectory or the momentum of it all? Like is it pushing back timelines? Um what kind of signal is that sending? >> I I don't think they'll listen to him to be honest with you. Um you know I I think when your leader says that it has less implications. I think it just strengthens the reason why you would want to own gold to protect you against a devaluing currency. All currencies inherently are meant to die as Dr. Fran Pick once said. So they understand it's in their DNA. Now, you know, Eric Young, uh, who is someone who I respect a lot on on on X, he came out and said now he he's not giving any sources, but he's hearing that the countries in the Gulf are are selling treasury reserves to buy gold and silver, emphasis on silver. And maybe that's what we saw in India to emphasis on silver. They have been rumored to have bought more silver than anyone in the world over the last several years, over 900 million ounces. They understand silver very, very, very well. But I wouldn't put much stock in what Moody had to say. I think it it's just again an indictment of all fiat currencies. And I think ask any any average Indian citizen who understands gold and silver, it's in their DNA. They would they would own it, prefer to own it over over currency any day. And when your president comes out and says that or your prime minister, whoever it is, says that, I think it deep down only reinforces the reason you would want to do it to begin with. No, it's Yeah, I'm curious like the the reaction like in in the markets was really interesting to see as well there because gold barely reacted. Maybe it was even or it was somewhat flat yesterday in the trading session, but silver spiked 7%. Um, is that just headline driven based on what we're seeing out of India or is there another factor at play Andy? >> I don't think it's headline driven at all. I mean, look, there was a time when the folks at Gatada, who I always whenever I get a chance to throw out a shout out to Bill Murphy and Chris Powell, anyone who owns gold ow owns them a debt of gratitude and they have my respect. They always used to say gold and silver will never be allowed to move more than 2% in a day. And that's true. It never did. I've been doing this for over 35 years. It never did. A 7% move is an outsized move. And it goes handinhand with what Bank of America, their lead metals analyst, was talking about recently when he said gold could go between $130 and $39 an ounce by the end of this year based upon the gold silver ratio, which is way out of whack. Well, what you saw yesterday is gold move up less than a half percent and silver move up 7%. That is kind of the trajectory of what he is talking about. But look when when China imports more silver in the first two or first 90 days of the year than they ever have in the history of the country as the price was being decimated when India's been buying it like I said close to 900 million ounces over the last 3 years um when silver is being taken off the comx exchange and levels that no one has ever seen before in February as the price was being destroyed here in the United States. Well what happened on Comx about 26 million ounces were delivered. Now, that's not a big delivery month. It was not a primary delivery month. They are um it would be um January, not February, March, not April, you know, um these kinds of things. And so, every other month, but 25 26 million ounces were delivered in February, but 39 million ounces Kai got on trucks and drove away. That's 2.8 million pounds. Who in God's green earth took possession of 2.8 8 million pounds of silver here in the United States in New York, put them on semi-truckss and drove away. But it's the same thing we're seeing. Price is a tool of misdirection. And I think that that silver is from a from a standpoint of asymmetric um measurement. Low downside, high upside. I don't think there's a a better buy on the planet. But you could talk about things like, you know, China, which was a net exporter through last year, is now a net importer this year. They're not exporting anything. We remember they they pushed back to uh the United States classifying silver as a critical mineral and said, "Fine, we're not going to export that much." But most people missed what they said a few months earlier in November as the second largest producer in the world said, "We're not going to send any of our domestic production out into the marketplace outside of China." And then you look at their restrictions on sulfuric acid exports which is beginning to show itself in fertilizer as Mosaic a big company said we have to massively change our guidance for this year as fertilizer is becoming too difficult to make because of the cost of of sulfuric acid but sulfuric acid is also needed copiously in the production and mining of copper. When you look at silver, uh, only about 20% of the silver mined last year came from companies like First Majestic, solely looking for silver. A majority of it came from byproduct mining, largely of copper, zinc, and lead too, but mostly copper. Well, if you if the sulfuric acid doesn't allow you to mine copper quite as well, nowhere near as well or at all, then what's going to happen to silver production? And these copper mines, look, they don't have any incentive price-wise to go looking for silver. they stumble across it when they're mining copper. All of these things are starting to come into play. The massive deliveries that we're seeing all around the globe um is certainly betraying the price of it all. And look, the pullback that we saw in in in the beginning of the year, the Bank of International Settlements, the most powerful bank in the world, came out and said, "Look, this was this was structural, not fundamental." Two reasons why it collapsed. Number one, at the end of every year, the beginning of of January, you have a rebalancing of the levered ETFs. And that time frame, the first two weeks of January is notorious for volatility in commodity markets because of the ETF rebalancing. Now, think of what happened up to January. Every week after week after week after week, silver was flying. They needed to rebalance those ETFs, right? So that means they sell ET uh silver within the leverage ETF in order to get their their balance sheet in line with their perspectus. You could have bet dollars to donuts this was going to happen. Well, at the same time, the CME group in their infinite wisdom in six week period from beginning of December to mid January, right when you wouldn't want to do this, jacked up margin rates, that is the collateral that needs to be held to either speculate or to hedge a position on COMX 300%. So between the massively rising cost of margin massively from roughly $15,000 to hedge a $5,000 contract on December 1st to $54,000 for that same contract just in a margin account uh 6 weeks later along with the rebalancing made everyone selling beget selling beget selling beget selling price collapses and then you see China come in and scoop up more than they ever have in history. 39 million ounces leave the comx. We're seeing the biggest, most sophisticated, wellunded money on the planet who does not use margin look at any pullback as an opportunity to get longer. And here again, price is a tool of misdirection. They used a they use this a synthetic orchestrated means of raising margins and rebalancing ETFs to to hammer the price. And then the big money says, "Haha, thank you." grab grab grap and grabs it all and puts it on their in their coffers at subsidized prices and no one's even looking or paying attention because they're all licking their wounds about silver that absolutely collapsed and crushed them. That's what you call misdirection, my friend, and it's everywhere. >> Talking about misdirection, one group that is really good at it as well as the US government, right? H how are they involved in all of this? Project Vault comes to mind here. 12 billion dollars to to start a strategic stockpile as well. Have we seen any buying yet out of out of the US government in that regard? Has anything like materialized? >> Well, we they haven't talked about it other than talking about it, but they haven't talked about purchases, but we've seen literally since Trump won the election every month deliveries that defy logic. No, less than one 1% of all contracts my entire 35 year career stood for delivery, guy. I mean, no one's these contracts were used to speculate or to hedge production or hedge an inventory like mine where the gold in my warehouse is offset with the gold on COMX so that I'm market neutral. No one stood for delivery and now the amount of delivery that we are seeing is off the charts. And this is the the only question that the media has completely and totally missed. Where the hell have they been? Who's standing for delivery every month and billions and billions and billions and billions and billions and billions and billions of dollars every month? Who's doing it? Doesn't mean it's all leaving the comx, although a lot has been lately. Who is standing for delivery when nobody ever did? Who's got nine figures to spend in silver and gold every month and stand for delivery, which is as unusual. I live in in Boca Ratan where I'll see you here in July at Rick's rules conference. You know how hot it gets here in July. I live on a golf course. If I woke up July 1st to 4 feet of snow on my back in my backyard, which is the first tea box of the golf course I live on, I wouldn't call my sister and say, "Send me my two snowmobiles that are in your garage in Minnesota, please, cuz I'm going to go snowmmoiling here in Florida." It's an anomaly. And the amount of metal that has been delivered every single month since Trump won the election, going on 19 straight months, it's interesting because that's how many months the the Chinese have been buying gold um month over month over month, even though they probably been buying longer than that. they just don't report it. But the bottom line is since he won the election, every month we've seen these kinds of way outsized deliveries uh outliers. Yet the media has no inclination to to dig into this or even mention it. To me, it betrays everything else they're talking about. When the most well-informed traders on the planet who happen to have more money than anyone at nine figures a pop every single month into billions of dollars, who's standing for delivery? Where is it going? And what are they bringing it home for? Instead of trusting the system, here's that word trust again. They would rather stand for delivery, control it themselves instead of trusting the paper promises that the ComX offers. So yeah, I I don't know. I think that's the biggest the biggest red flag of all is who the hell is standing for delivery every single month unabated without without stop. You you shared some really interesting insights here um Andy but what is maybe as a last question as well here what is maybe the one thing investors should pay very close attention to if it's just one metric one chart one statistic what should we be paying attention be paying attention >> if I were going to pay attention just one thing it would be the yield on the 10-year Treasury um you know the the Federal Reserve in theory doesn't have the ability to control the 10-year Treasury that they control the front end of the curve this is one of the reasons why I think the Genius Act is coming into play because remember anytime money moves from next January forward, it'll move via stable coin on a blockchain network backed by 90-day or less US Treasury. So when you worry about the new Fed chair being hawkish, don't be the anytime money moves since from next January forward, it will be synthetically pegged to short-term treasuries, which will nail the front end of the curve down to the to the floor. Again, they won't have the ability to do much with interest rates. It's almost killing one half of their dual mandate. uh the back end is different and ask yourself why would anybody want to buy a 10-year Treasury that is paying 4% when inflation and money creation and and the CP lie is a lie. We all know it. Inflation is much higher than they say. Ask John Williams of Shadow Stats. He'll say add an 11 to the number that they quote. No one would want to buy a 10-year Treasury. On top of the fact that it can be sanctioned and taken from you when gold has 10xed it over the last two years, doubled it over the last 25 years. there's no incentive to hold 10-year treasuries. And as the yield goes higher, as more and more countries dreurize, that's a new word. Um then yeah, that's going to affect the entire system, stocks, bonds, real estate, the banks that hold treasuries, the insurance companies, the pensions, they're all inversely correlated to that moment. That was originally the Claus Schwab great, you know, that moment where, you know, the the global reset where you'll own nothing and be happy where the whole system collapses by rising interest rates. Uh because it's all overlevered. And this is the problem that happens when you allow the central bankers to control interest rates. It it creates massive distortions in asset prices, misallocations of resource and capital. And when the interest rates are set free rather than managed through things like yield curve control or or or shadow entities in the Cayman Islands buying all these treasuries, you really believe it's the Cayman Islands or could it actually be a shell company backed by the Fed? I'm just saying. I mean, there's skepticism should be employed here. When rates move higher and asset prices find that symmetry, that's the scary part because everything everything in this country is wickedly inversely correlated and wickedly levered to an increase in in interest rates. We saw what happened when it hit 5% silicone and signature poof. Uh if it goes past 5% uh you know Katy bar the doors and that would be the one thing that I would watch more than anything. And Peter Schiff will tell you he's smart smarter than me. He says, "Yeah, prices, uh, inflation's going way higher and interest rates are going way higher." If he's right, and I assume he is, I I suspect he is, uh, that would be the one the one thing that I would watch more than anything, and that would be that would be the one thing that would make people want to maybe re-evaluate even their best laid plans. >> Fantastic, Andy. Bit scary at the end, but uh, we we'll we'll go with it. I usually like ending on a positive note, but I think it's all positive for Gold and Silver here, so we'll take that. Um, all all roads lead to gold and silver. I can't get away from it. And >> well, let me give you one bit of positivity cloaked in negativity. For those of you, and I'm sure most people have watched the um the movie The Shaw Shank Redemption, when you create as much debt as we have for as long as we have, um that's the tube of crap that Andy Defrain had to crawl through. You got to get through that. But when you get to the other end, maybe there is reason for optimism. And if we were talking longer, I would give you my reasons why I think there is reason to be optimistic. But it doesn't change the fact that we got to crawl through that tube first. We got to go through the difficult times to get to the other side. And and I think that's the reason to hold gold and silver. Part of the reason to hold gold and silver and also part of the reason to understand that there is reason to be optimistic, but before we get there, we got to we got to go through the tough times that mathematically are inevitable. So I guess we'll see what happens. You own gold and silver not just to survive but maybe to sur to thrive and get you to the other side where optimism prevails where you will be able to take advantage of things like si singledigit price to earnings ratios on blue chip stocks or the real estate you've always wanted at pennies on the dollar when interest rates find symmetry with asset prices that are way distorted right now there is reason doesn't mean we're going to get through the tough times easily but once we're through it yeah reason to be optimistic >> yeah we'll we'll record a positivity episode in Boca Raton at the the home conference. So looking forward to that. Andy, in the meantime, where can we send our audience to follow your work. >> So we have Miles Franklin Media. Thank you for that. That's our YouTube channel. We're up to about 135,000 subscribers in a very short time. Thank you for watching. Any of you that do. And for those who want prices here in the United States on metal that we don't publish, we only allow purchasing up to 10 grand on our website, info@sfranklin.com. We'll send you our price list. It's updated all the time. it'll be as good or better than anyone in the country. Any questions you've heard on this podcast or any that you have on IAS or anything, let us know. You know, I appreciate this the shameless plug, Kai. And you're one of the best guys in the industry that I've met in 35 years. I always love coming on your show. You're well prepared. You're well thought out. You're a gentleman. And thank you very much for having me. I appreciate it very, very much. Look forward to seeing you in July. And one of these days, we're going to get that beer we keep talking about. >> It's It's long overdue. It's long overdue. So, I'm really looking forward to it. You're making me blush, Andy. It was very kind of you. Much appreciated. It's always great to have you on the show. So, wealth of knowledge. Really appreciate it, Andy. Thank you so much. And everybody else, thank you so much for tuning in. As always, a wonderful discussion here with Andy Sheman about gold and silver. If you agree, if you disagree, put a comment down below. Really curious what your thoughts are. What do you think is going to happen in China this weekend? Really curious to hear your thoughts. And uh I've asked an audience yesterday at a presentation I gave, do you think silver is monetary or industrial? put that down below as well. I'm curious because I read all the comments. I shouldn't. It's not always healthy, but I do. So, um, tremendously appreciate you watching and, uh, stay tuned for more and don't let the emotions run your investments for you. Take care out there.