Silver Price Rips Over $80 As New Shortage Looms...

0:00The Strait of Hormuz has been opened for now. And it has the silver price soaring well over the $80 mark today. While Reuters is reporting about Indian banks holding gold and silver imports that could cause supply shortages. Well, hello there my friends. Chris Marcus here with you for Arcade economics on Friday, April 17th, which I would say is no, I don't know. Kind of hard to phrase it. I want to hand a good day for the world that the Strait has been temporarily reopened. I don't know how well that's going to work out long term as we'll talk about in today's show, although especially if you are a gold and silver investor, then congratulations on the good news where the gold and silver prices have been having a huge day following the announcement that the Strait has been reopened.

1:01For now, we have a truce yet. Markets reacting in a big way there is silver currently up $3.70. I'm recording right around 11 a.m. central time. So we see $82.37. The high of the day was $83.24, so about $0.85 higher, a little bit off the highs yet. Still that is quite a nice day and also fun to be back reminds you of the old days. Remember around Christmas in January where you just wake up, silver'd be up five bucks, then you'd have tomorrow, silver'd be up five bucks again, not up $5 yet. We were close, although either case, it's quite exciting, if you're a silver investor to see the price back over $82. We've seen some incredibly vicious sell-offs, some incredibly stunning rallies as well. The low I know is $61.20 and that was after the Iran War broke out, which in a longer term perspective, I still think is going to be a big driver of the precious metals in

2:06the years ahead. Although as we've seen over the past six weeks and I would imagine we will continue to see the markets are trading as if anything that raises oil, deflationary and the metals are going to sell off and anything that says, like we saw today, if you have a truce and the price of oil goes down, that you will see the metals rise, now in some hand you could very rightfully say if the price of oil goes up, doesn't that mean that everything is going to be inflationary? Yes, and there's what the textbook says and how things trade. Similarly, the way that when inflation reports come out and they're hotter than expected and the metals will often sell off on that because the thinking is that, well, if inflation's hotter, that's less likely the Fed's going to cut rate. I think there's going to be a point where those patterns break where that switch is from, I don't care about what the Fed's going to do, my money's losing value and certainly

3:07in a market with a tight silver supply, I could very easily see that happening because as exciting as it is that silver is 82 bucks in the comics futures, we see Shanghai futures up to 93, 12. I also found out about this site a while back but I see there's a lot of stuff out there and I have my spreadsheet that actually does the math and works through the exchange rate and the number of kilograms per contract but they are correct in trading 93 bucks in China. Also trading two dollars higher in India and you'll want to stick around to the end because we have a rather conceivably explosive development that just happened with India and it might add when things really went off the rails last year, it was the shortage in India that led to a shortage in London that had metal come over from the comics and China which then, I don't know if you would say we have a shortage in China yet, yet conditions where

4:09you have this premium 11 dollars higher which I think speaks to the tightness so companies are still getting silver, they're paying a hefty premium and in either case good day for the silver market and speaking of that premium, I've been showing this chart lately on the bottom here is the premium discount at the end of January when the price of silver was over 120 bucks, that premium got over 18 dollars came back in quite a bit since then and here you can see it's been climbing and was 1067 as of yesterday and we're seeing it, I think it was 11 bucks, yep 80 western futures, 8254 and the Shanghai futures so just about 1070 so yeah, maybe that is today's price, we don't have a date on this one but over 10 dollars and meanwhile gold having a decent day as well, currently up 82 bucks at 4890 and as you can

5:09see up here was as high as 4912, we fun to see when gold gets back to that $5,000 level, I don't know, will there be resistance and it bounces around there or could it also be a scenario where once it goes back above 5,000 and time has passed allowing people to grasp what has really been happening and the longer term impacts, we'll see soon enough yet in either case up 82 dollars today and by the way for all of the mining stock investors you better be out there smiling today, I know there's a lot of people who get frosty and upset because sometimes they feel the mining stocks are not up as much as they think they should be and in either case the miners having a big day, also we take a quick look at the oil price as you could imagine, down quite a bit, that's 11 bucks, I think the high was 118 or 11763 so we are what, $34 off of the highs, quick look at the bond market, you can see the yield has come in

6:14almost eight basis points, although still well above where the war started, similar how the oil price is still well above where it was when the war started which would make sense because the temporary ceasefire or reopening of the straight as it is today, it's temporary and not to rain on anyone's parade but we will go through some of the dynamics of why I still don't know that in the longer term this is any easier to resolve, although I will hold out optimism, hopefully today is a good step forward, I would love to be wrong about that and again we can see here that the straight has been reopened, now some interesting developments, US considered a $20 billion cash for uranium deal with Iran, US and Iran are negotiating a three-page plan to end the war with one element under discussion being that US would release $20 billion in frozen Iranian funds and return for Iran giving up its stockpile of enriched uranium, we'll see how that goes certainly an

7:16interesting one but in the end we're at this very delicate point where like I mentioned before if the oil price goes up you're probably going to see metals sell off no matter even if they said hey we need a $1 trillion war budget and they're like as of the Fed said and we're going to fund that by just doing direct QE then you probably see the metals rally but there's some degree which when the oil price goes up even if that will be inflationary in the long term you can expect to see the metals sell off and obviously the inverse when the oil price drops so you're going to see the metals rally like they are today which if you're out there as a trader creates an intriguing environment if you're just out there as a stacker so I was telling one of my friends yesterday well you know what my you know what my silver is doing today sitting there and you know what it will probably be doing tomorrow hopefully and maybe even the day after that probably still be sitting there

8:19and I think the long-term path is I think this is only accelerating the long-term path of what we've already seen happen and what we've seen happen in the last couple of years and when you think about what gold has done over the last 25 years least as of today well who knows what happens maybe aliens come down and teach us a more peaceful way of living but at least from what we can see today it doesn't look like the next 25 years are yet on track to be different in terms of military and power struggles as what we've seen the last 25 years but anyway to help put this in context we are going to dig into some clips of some of the recent developments recapping what happened going back to the negotiations last week briefly and then also what is happening now so that at least heading into the weekend I'd like to think this will be a good guide so you can understand and as you're reading and hearing things have a good context to put it in

9:24and anyway with that said first here we'll go to Max Blumenthal explaining the dynamics behind the Lebanon Israel cease fire that was announced yesterday Joseph Aoun the Lebanese president and then you have Lebanese Prime Minister Noof Salam who are basically puppets at this point and they have no monopoly on violence they don't have control over force of arms inside Lebanon Hasbulla does and so what they did was they agreed to negotiations with Israel in the United States in Washington DC in violation of the Lebanese Constitution and completely sold out the population of southern Lebanon that is being assaulted and ethnically cleansed and they have no ability to to prevent Israel from invading if they achieve this fantasy buffer zone only hasbulla has the ability to deter Israel similarly after the Black Wednesday massacre by Israel

10:26after the cease fire with Iran was announced when which over 365 civilians were killed all across Lebanon it was Iran that got Israel to stop attacking all across Lebanon by threatening to counter attack and bombard Israel with ballistic missiles it also closed the strait of Hormuz in retaliation for that attack because it was a explicit violation of the terms of the cease fire as announced by Pakistani Prime Minister Shabbat Sharif so this is all about Iran exercising its leverage and Hasbulla deterring Israel on the ground the Lebanese government has sold out the entire country they are accepting Israel's violations of the cease fire agreement signed with Hasbulla um last year and at the same time they're calling for Hasbulla to disarm obviously if you're counting on one side to disarm in the middle of a war

11:30just strictly from a mathematical perspective that seems like an obstacle that would be priced in either case let us go back to Max explaining what happened last week in the negotiations yeah the Iranians also know that a massive attack the US could be preparing for a massive attack I mean just look at the movement of US troops look at the way that the negotiations in Islamabad went down Renette Niyahu basically called JD Vance and said no sorry you have to introduce some nuclear obstructionism and close negotiations as Iran's delegation is preparing for a second round meanwhile one of Donald Trump's top allies who is actually one of Netanyahu's top assets in the US media Mark Teeson at the Washington Post called for the US to kill Iran's entire delegation which included our friend who's an American citizen Muhammad Miranda

12:33so it was effectively a call for killing an American citizen slaughtering diplomats it would have completely ended any possibility of any negotiations going forward and that's the Israeli agenda here and Israel has Trump completely under their control so there's every reason for Iran to expect the US to violate this ceasefire and in terms of some other dynamics that also are unresolved and again it's great that the street is open from an economic standpoint although looking ahead of where this might lead let's take a listen to this one the UAE is already collapsing hotels are closing people are leaving the expats are leaving and that is why the UAE and its tyrannical leader Muhammad bin Zayed are pushing the US right now for a ground invasion because they believe that they cannot survive unless Iran is totally destroyed so I don't see

13:35how Trump succeeds in opening the Strait of Hormuz without standing down and cutting some transactional deal with Iran but at the same time I don't see how Trump survives by defying the Israelis which is what that would entail and they're already putting pressure on him right now so Trump has no way out of this so we'll see how today's announcement affects these dynamics although Max mentioned professor Muhammad Miranda and we actually have a few clips from him where here he explains the thinking inside Iran obviously understand I have a largely American audience so I'm not saying you need to agree with what he's saying although if you would like to hear at least what their thinking is and how they're likely to respond let us take a listen here what the seriousness of the blockade is having in terms of the thought process inside Tehran well the Iranians when they went to Islamabad the negotiators had full authority before leaving

14:42the speaker of parliament who was the head of the delegation spoke extensively with Aytullah Hamine the leader but the US side was obviously very different bands obviously had no authority who is constantly making phone calls including to Netanyahu and later we learned that Netanyahu said the bands reported to him which is a strange word to use and that other officials also report to him US officials which is also strange but the blockade from the Iranians perspective is intensifying the pace in which the global economy is moving towards collapse and the belief here is that the United States by intensifying the blockade and Israeli regime by violating the ceasefire agreement and attacking Lebanon has is pushing forward the collapse even faster than

15:46before so basically Netanyahu by blocking the ceasefire and preventing Iran from allowing more ships to pass through the strait of hormones and vans by failing to have authority to have an agreement because of Netanyahu because of both acts of Netanyahu the belief here is that the global economy will collapse much sooner than expected and that Trump out of desperation will launch an attack pretty soon and here's one more clip from professor Miranda again giving an idea of how Iran is viewing this and perhaps more significantly likely to respond again this was before today's announcement yet when you're thinking about all right well we have this temporary window here what happens next I think this will be helpful but also every single day that goes by

16:48the strait of hormones is more or less close and that is putting putting more pressure on the United States under Trump and the belief in Iran is that Trump does not make the decisions it is the Israeli lobby the Zionist lobby in Netanyahu and so the only way for to force the United States to make a decision that benefits its own people is to increase the economic pressure so much that the United States under Trump or the leadership ultimately says well here we have to prioritize our own interests over that of Netanyahu so each day that goes by we're approaching sadly a global economic catastrophe which will probably lead to a world economic depression but Iran is preparing for war Iran is also negotiating in order to be seen by the international community as participating in negotiations but and also Iran achieved something big in these

17:53through these through the ceasefire and that is that everyone saw that on day one the United States demanded Iran to submit and accept defeat that didn't happen and after 40 days the United States accepted Iran's conditions what the 10 point plan as the framework for discussion now later on the spokeswoman for the White House said we threw it in the bin but that's not important what is important is that everyone saw the evolution of U.S. the U.S. demands from unconditional surrender to okay we'll accept talking within that framework of your own and that I think was a sea change created a sea change and perceptions of the war across the world so anyway hopefully that was helpful in terms of understanding some of the dynamics both of those interviews were recorded Thursday so before today's developments yet I think still speak to some of the things that you can expect to see unfold going forward and again if you're a stacker I don't know that

18:57is really all that much you really need to do yet if you're a trader I mean I get mixed emotions where you know the degree of I don't know if one is supposed to profit off of a war yet if you're supposed to make good trading decisions anyway hopefully this is helpful and for those of you who stuck around continue to do my YouTube nerd studying and trying to cook you in so for those of you that are still here with us and have watched the video all the way through we have quite an intriguing development especially on the silver side because as I mentioned earlier when all the silver shenanigans broke out and the price soared beyond 50 ended up beyond 121 this all began with a shortage that developed in India which spread from there so with that said I want to go through this one because as you can see Reuters reporting Indian banks have halted gold and silver imports

19:58mid-a-delay in government clearance we'll read most of this one it's quite fascinating Indian banks have halted gold and silver imports with tons of metal stuck at customs a formal government order has not been issued authorizing the imports and without fresh imports India could face supply shortages and for those of you who watch the channel regularly you've heard me say that even other prices come down we're not far away from another shortage developing somewhere this is still a fragile situation as evidenced by that spread in Shanghai that I mentioned earlier and if you'd not heard me say that that's a great reason to hit that subscribe button and the notification bell so that you can stay posted and I might add that if you go over to arcadeeconomics.com right there you can get these shows free via email so case youtube doesn't notify you just want to make sure you're aware of these developments so we're at risk of supply shortages which it wouldn't be

20:59intriguing if we saw a supply shortage in gold but certainly we got a taste of what happens when we saw one in silver and that's the world's second largest gold consumer and biggest silver buyer which relies on overseas purchases to meet nearly all of its demand now they mention that weak Indian demand could weigh on the global gold and silver prices although if people are worried that there's going to be a shortage that could increase the demand and I guess once you had a shortage I don't know how you calculate the demand while it's not trading but also it would narrow the country's trade deficit and support the rupee which has been among the worst performing Asian currencies so you always have that factor mixed in that could be driving the government to act in certain ways and just quite complex here but the halting by a Indian banks of gold and silver imports from overseas suppliers and the tons of metal stuck at customs due to the absent of a formal government authorization of bullion imports not been previously reported and basically

22:05the directorate general of foreign trade typically issues in order at the start of each financial year listing banks authorized by the reserve bank of india to import gold and silver previous order was issued in april 2025 was validated until the end of last financial year in march 31st and now the banks are waiting the new directive government surround the world always getting things right there and banks expected the announcement in early april as it normally gets every year but so far there's no update and more than five tons of gold are stuck at customs clearance and this has also led banks to halt new import orders from overseas and also we see around eight tons of silver is stuck with that customs clearance and there's no point in placing new orders when earlier consignments cannot be delivered another bullion dealer said but there's more because gold and silver inventories from previous months imports are experiencing drawdowns with the market now relying on sales from exchange traded funds which are seeing

23:08redemption so if they're going to have to get the metal from the exchange traded fund you would think at least from supply and demand you'd have to bid the price up i mean this is quite wild because without imports supply shortages will emerge and premiums will rise after akshaya tritia the second largest gold buying festival in india all right what else can we pile on here oh yes well here you go that as the Iran conflict has pushed up the price of oil gas and fertilizer india's import bill is likely to rise in april which may have prompted the government to slow gold and silver imports to contain the trade deficit so there you have it i'll leave you with that one to ride into the weekend with as again we have silver at least as of 11 20 am on friday that's central time now eighty two forty over ninety three dollars in Shanghai with the mining stock soaring and real quick i'd love to get a special shout out to my buddy Jeff Wilson we played a

24:11clip of him on the show about a month and a half ago as i caught up with him in vancouver at the resource investment conference but there's stocks up another six percent today and i happen to notice it was up twelve percent earlier because i was looking in my brokerage account i am a shareholder uh one of my biggest mining stock nerds is a huge fan of what Jeff has been doing so i started learning more and when i saw it i was like remember when i used to talk to him years ago we've had them on the show once or twice and it was like well in the stock five cents and i'm looking at it at fifty five cents up seven hundred forty three percent on that one as of this morning so just excited for Jeff and the progress they've made because especially when you hear that during a golden silver rally the hope of getting a five or ten bagger thank you Jeff for a couple of bags and uh anyway congratulations to precipitate gold also uh like i mentioned earlier

25:11if you would like to get this show delivered so you get an email we don't send too much else aside from that but just uh so you want to make sure that you can stay posted on your daily golden silver news go over to our katieganomics.com you can just put your email and first name in there and we send these out each day so no matter what happens next you can stay posted on the precious metals markets and just in case you want to understand more of these dynamics driving why again i hope to be wrong about this but i do continue to believe that despite today's announcement that there are some significant impediments towards a longer term deal did have Alex Newman join me on this show earlier this week gave a great rundown of what we're facing and to find out more just click on the video that's coming your way now