Great post on Silver…..
P. Baker: "At the recent LBMA meeting, the consensus was: Physical is king.”
Phil Baker, former CEO of Hecla Mining (USA's largest silver producer for 20 years), reveals a seismic shift. The driver of the silver price is no longer Western speculators.
✅ India's demand in October was 60M ounces, up from 15M ounces the prior year—a four-fold increase.
✅ “That is the driver… the underlying price of silver above $45-50 is really coming out of India.”
INDUSTRIAL USERS ARE PANICKING
Companies are abandoning "just-in-time" supply models and hoarding physical metal.
➡️ US industrial buyers are now securing 6-9 months of inventory ahead of potential tariffs.
➡️ “My advice to them for the past 18 months: don't be short silver. They're finally putting the silver in place.”
THE SYSTEM IS SHOWING ITS LIMITS
➡️Recent events prove the physical market now dictates the price.
➡️During the 10-hour CME outage, premiums in Shanghai and India “widened almost instantly.”
➡️“The physical market is driving the financial market in a way it hasn't in my career.”
➡️At the recent LBMA meeting, the consensus was: “Physical is king.”
THE SUPPLY CLIFF IS A MATHEMATICAL CERTAINTY
➡️The deficit isn't cyclical; it's structural for the next decade.
➡️Mine supply peaked in 2016 at ~900M ounces and “we will not reach that level again this decade. Realistically, not until 2035.”
➡️Annual deficits are 100-200M ounces. This shortfall can only be filled by metal from investors, as central banks hold negligible silver.
➡️“It requires a much higher price and a lot of [investors] to be mobilised…. We've had low prices for a long time. As a result, you've not had the exploration.”
https://x.com/Mark4XX/status/1996535356292755906
https://x.com/wmiddelkoop/status/1996556259374604460