Transcription
Hello dear friends. My name is Clive Thompson. Today is Monday, January 26th, 2026. So, we're nearly at the end of the month of January, first month of 2026. The time is around 5:15 p.m. in Europe. The US stock markets have been open for more than an hour. European markets are coming to the close. Are we witnessing the end of fiat? We are witnessing history in the making.
Forget everything else for a moment and look at the precious metals markets. We are seeing daily moves that are simply staggering. Gold is making $100 jumps almost routine. It's smashed through the $5,000 ounce ceiling except it wasn't a ceiling because it just kept going and going. And the real story today at least is about silver. It's on an absolute tear. When I looked earlier today, it was up about 5.8%, breaking through $109. I repeat, up 5.8%. I think it's probably gone higher since. We're going to look at that in a second. Platinum and palladium are being pulled along by this explosive ride.
Now, let's go straight in and look at what's happening to the price of silver. Here we see the price of silver straight away. And I can't believe my eyes. I'm seeing a price of $112.70. Up over 9% on the day. It says is up $930. Um, that's kind of off the radar screen. Uh, the Shanghai price, which I just click on now, it's up at $127. There we are. $127. Uh, that's about $154 higher than the price in COMX. That's an all-time record as well. Uh, the nearated future in Comx is at $111, which is slightly below the spot price of 11280. Uh, so it looks like silver has gone into backquidation at least for the nearated contract.
Gold is likewise soaring. Um, we'll look at the gold price here. It's up over $1118 today at $5,153. $5,100 up $11764 it says or up 2.37%. Platinum we're looking at here. Uh, that's $2,89 up $75 on the day, 2.78. Um, palladium is doing well. Uh, up $12 at $2843 or 3.74%. I'll just pop back to silver, which is now trading at $112.90. It's on an absolute tear. And if I look at bring the bring the chart, let's just make that um get that all on the screen. Auto scaling here. If I bring the chart here, you can see that it looks like if I go tighter here, it looks like the silver price is going parabolic. The same can be said of the gold price.
If we look here, about a year ago, I sat here and talked about what the end of the fiat system might look like. I suggested that we wouldn't just fall off the cliff one day, wake up and find that nothing exists anymore, but I said we might see a final face ripping meltup, a huge rally in precious metals before the system breaks. I said we might see a period where asset prices seem to go parabolic as confidence in the currency evaporates. Well, take a look around. What we are seeing now in the gold and silver markets and even the stock market to some extent looks a little bit like the meltup I described might happen. Now, whatever's going on, this is not a normal bull market. Gold and silver are not simply keeping pace with the rate of inflation at 2% a year. Absolutely not. Gold and silver are front running what they see might be coming down the line. What they see is potentially a massive monetary expansion as governments move to pay off their debt through newly printed money potentially leading us to a very high inflation rate or even worse. So this is a flight from currency.
Now, one of the things which might be triggering it at the moment is emanating from the other side of the world. And I don't quite know how that fits in, but I'm going to describe it to you. And maybe um some of you can see how this is impacting the precious metals market. For many, many years, even decades, there's been a seemingly free lunch available to large hedge funds and large banks. Not to you and I, but that free lunch is known as the Japanese yen carry trade. In the Japanese yen carry trade, large banks or hedge funds would borrow billions, even trillions of Japanese yen at near zero interest rates. And they would invest that money in higher yielding assets such as US treasuries or Brazilian bonds or the stock market. It didn't really matter where they invested the money. Borrowing Japanese currency seemed like a a free lunch bet because one, the Japanese yen was likely to continue falling and two, the interest rate that you were paying on the loan you the money you borrow was effectively zero. So you just had to invest in almost anything and you could make free money. And as long as the yen stayed weak, it was like a free money printing machine. But that free money machine is starting to break down.
For many decades, the J the Bank of Japan has been trying to create inflation because Japan's been in deflation. It's finally got its wish and inflation is running hotter than they can handle. To fight it, the central bank, the Bank of Japan, is being forced to abandon their zero interest rate policy. Zero interest rate policy, ZIRP. They're forced to being they're being forced to abandon ZERP. And what's happening, we're seeing a violent sell-off in Japanese government bonds known as JGBs, Japanese government bonds. And that is sending yields in Japan soaring upwards. Now, this is causing some kind of panic for those who are at the wrong end of it. As Japanese interest rates rise, the carry trade is starting to unwind. Investors who've got global assets are thinking about selling them to repay the loans they've taken from in Japanese yen. Why? Because the interest rates have been rising.
So, let's have a look at the Japanese yen interest rates now. So, I'll just cross over to here the browser and we're going to go to the Japanese uh let's go to the Japanese interest rates. I'll bond yields Japan 3month yield. So here we see in 20 I'll go back uh much further in time to be get get a full picture back in 2019 we see interest rates are negative you can see it's 0 minus 0.1 0.2% 2% uh negative 2020 21 22 23 24 interest rates were negative. Then in about the middle of the year in 2024 interest rates rise from negative to 0%. And they keep rising. And so what we've seen is since the middle of 2024 a gradually rising short-term interest rate. This is a threemonth bond. And we now see that the yield on that 3-month bond is 0.77%. It's not free money anymore. If you borrowed Japanese yen, you'll have to be paying at least 0.77% and some with the margin. But it gets worse if you look at the 2-year bond. The two-year bond, which also for many, many years had a negative yield right through until 2024, beginning of 2024, started to rise rapidly and it's now 1.27%. The 10-year bond, same story. The what's that say? The yields were negative. Um, and the yield is uh now going from 0% up to 2.38%. And the 30-year bond where the yield was about 0.6% here. Actually, it was 0.1% at one point, but let's call it 0.4% there. Yeah, call it 0.6% by about 2022. That's risen to 3.6%. Uh, at one point today 3.93%. So Japanese bond prices are falling which means that the yields on those bonds are rising. Now unwinding of the Japanese yen carry trade could mean that people are forced to do all sorts of strange actions. We don't know exactly what's going on but that might be a factor at play.
Now, what's Let's come back to the metals. And I'm just going back to gold. Let's go back to silver here. Silver X A. Oh my goodness. We It's now $113. Um, so why is the meltup in metals accelerating at a faster pace than justified by consumer prices? I think what's happening is people are front running a possible future loss of confidence, a future loss of trust. Let's just have a quick look at this this here. Um, I'm going to show you something. Let's look at that. So, you know, inflation here is at 2%. Are people expecting a mammoth spike in inflation a few years down the line and they're front running it? It it could be. And what happens when inflation soarses? Well, we're looking here at some bank notes from Yugoslavia back in the 1990s. This is about 1994. Inflation became so high uh that the prices were doubling almost every single day and a half. People who were earning money daily had to immediately rush to exchange it for food or anything else, Deutsch marks for example, before it became valueless. So what you earned yesterday would already be valueless by tomorrow. That's what happens in a hyperinflationary environment.
Now, I'll just pause here for a few seconds while we look at a few interesting pictures and ask you to take a second to subscribe and like if you like these types of videos. I've got a lot more to tell you and I've got some interesting things to tell if you stick with me. But while you're looking at these nice pictures, please uh hit that subscribe button and the little bell button so you're notified when there's more videos coming out. Now, I'm going to move to something much more interesting. What is going on in comics? So we'll look at this um chart here. So what I would like you to look at here is you can see that as of the this is 9th of January on the left hand side and 22nd of January on the right hand side. So I've taken two snapshots of COMX on these two dates. We can see at the top the total amount of registered silver which is available for delivery now and and and potentially planned to be delivered uh into the maturing contracts, the contracts which mature in January. Um, we have 123 million ounces on the 9th of January. And we've also got the eligible silver which is silver in the right form but not actually warranted ready for delivery yet. Could be put into eligible for delivery at any time, registered, become registered any time and that was 315 million. Of course, part of that 315 million ounces is owned by um institutions who have no intention of ever uh selling on COMX and don't intend to deliver it as part of the deliveries. But in theory, there was between the two 439 million ounces of silver on ComX. That's quite a bit. It's about half a year's supply from the silver mines, even though some of that will never be deliverable.
If we look today, this is actually from last Friday, I think, 22nd of January with the last figures I could get. The registered silver which was 123 million ounces is down to 114 million ounces. That's the amount of silver which is ready to be delivered in uh in respect of maturing contracts. So that's down and the amount of eligible silver is down from 315 million to 302 million which means the grand total of silver held by COMX has fallen from 439 million ounces 439 to 416 million ounces 416 439 to 416. It may not seem like a big fall, but what I want to look at here is the open interest in the March futures. There is massive open interest in the March futures. Back on the 9th of January, the open interest in March on silver was equivalent to 58 million ounces, which was more than all the silver held at Comx. That number has increased. It's 100 Now it's 105,000 contracts, up from 101,000 contracts. That number is now 528 million ounces, which potentially could be called for delivery. Now, nobody realistically expects it all to be called for delivery because historically most maturing contracts at Comx are rolled over. They're not delivered. People buy back their uh short position and the longs don't ask to deliver and then the shorts get roll it out to a future month and the shorts buy for a future month and the longs by for a future month. So basically every a lot of people roll over their contracts on maturity but in theory we have 528 million ounces here which might be called for delivery. It's a lot when the total number of ounces available for delivery is only currently 114 million ounces and if I add the rest which could be converted potentially another 300 million ounces the amount available is only 416 million ounces less than the 528 which might be called for delivery. So the question is what might happen in March? Will people call for delivery more than usual or not?
Well, let's look at what's been going on. I'm going to show you the silver delivery notices month by month. Um, and I've got it from 2024, 2025, and 2026. Um, and I'm just going to focus on January, but you can see the pattern with the other months. They're all every single month, month after month. In 2025, the amount of silver demanded for delivery was much higher than the amount of silver uh demanded for delivery the year before. But let's look at January. In January 2024, 1,360 contracts were called for delivery. In January 2025, nearly double that, 2,370 contracts were called for delivery. In January 2026, this January, which is not quite finished, we've had 9,181 contracts call for delivery, which is 6.75 times normal. 6.75 times at least the 2024 number. So what's being called for delivery in January uh at 6 at at that in I translate that into ounces of silver there's 45 million let's call it 46 million because it's 45.9 million 46 million ounces of silver have been called for delivery in January 2026 and just to put that uh back in context there's only uh 2 million ounces uh left um in open contracts. So, it could potentially go a little bit higher.
Now, let's step forward to March where we've got this 528 million of open contracts on COMX and look here at what happened in March last year. Well, in March last year, uh, in 2025, there was 16 million uh, sorry, not 16,000 contracts called for delivery compared with 5,000 the year before. So nearly three times as many contracts were called for delivery in 2025 as were called for delivery in 2024. Now what happens if we have the same impact in March this year as we had in January where in January the figure was 6.75 times the 2024 figure. So what if the 2026 calls for delivery are let's say nearly seven times what they were in 2024. In 2024, we had um 5,000 contracts maturing. Uh, 5,487 5,500. So that would be about Oops, I've I've come off that. Sorry, big pardon. That would be about 4,000. Um, let's go back to there. That's what we want. There we are. So that would be if we go 5,000 * 7 that'd be about 35,000 contracts but because it's 5,500 let's call it 40,000 contracts would be called for delivery. So in March 2024 we had 27 million ounces called for delivery. What if it's six times that or seven times that this year? That would be keep coming off that. That would be uh let's see 30* 7 um that would be about 200 million ounces out of the available 400 million ounces. but certainly a lot more than what's registered. So, it's possible that we might find that COMX is overwhelmed with deliveries. Uh, and this could be what people are uh why people are rushing to buy silver now because they're not sure whether it'll all be there when March comes if they need it.
So, what else is going on in the world to drive gold and silver higher? Well, we've got a very we've had a very strong economy seemingly in 2025. You know, the uh stock market went up a lot. Um, it was about up about 16%. We had the obviously a lot of that uh rise in stocks was due to the AI sector. Um, AI and electronics and computers. Um, so that um AI boom was in part driven by what's called vendor financing. That's where you pay a company money to buy your own products. It creates sales, but of course there's no guarantee that the buyer of those products will actually ever make a profit. So there is some talk about the markets being overvalued and maybe a little bit of money is leaking out of the stock market which is absolutely immense compared with the gold and silver markets into these underlying markets. The silver market is about onetenth of the size of the gold market and the platinum market is about onetenth of the size of the silver market. So much much much smaller markets and that explains why these precious metal prices are getting squeezed up by a little bit of money coming out of the stock market into the precious metal market.
So to bring this all together, the explosive moves that we're seeing in precious metals looks to me like it's a clear signal that we are entering a new phase. Now what about the timeline? The end of the fiat system could take many years, maybe even decades. I don't think so. I think it can't I don't think it can last that long because government debt is deal is clearly out of control globally. Um, something has to be done to rein it in. They could raise taxes but I don't think there's an appetite to do that. They could cut spending. There's definitely not appetite to do that. Um, or they could do the easy option which is what I think is going to happen which is invite the central banks of this world to buy government debt. Um, and where does the central banks get the money from? They print it. So, as the debt expands, I think we're going to see uh the central banks engaging in quantitive easing, printing money to buy the government debt to stop the yields rising any further. Remember what I just looked at in Japan and that of course is throwing a lot of money into the system. I think people are front running that saying this could be the the the start of a situation where the amount of money coming into the system is so large we start to panic. Uh, everyone else will start to panic. So I want to be ahead of the curve. So I'm running to put gold and silver in my portfolio ahead of time. So maybe this gold and silver rise that we are seeing is not the bubble that some people are thinking maybe there is no pin or maybe it's real.
Whatever you do um you have to diversify. So I don't if what first of all what do you do if you've never invested in gold and silver and you feel you should well I don't re recommend rushing in. I think what you can do is buy a very small amount and see how you feel. But the good thing about that is you can buy a bit more next week and a bit more the week after and so forth. What that means is that your average price won't be the highest price ever. Because I'm sure that some people coming in now are feeling, well god, maybe I'm the world's greatest fool. I'm buying at what looks like the top of the market because after all the chart, if you look at the chart here, it looks like it's almost at the top. It's going to bump along the ceiling. Well, it kind of looked like that there, didn't it? And and here and here. So, um, it it always looks like it's at the top and it might go a lot higher, but it doesn't matter. If it goes up, you can buy a bit more and your average price will below the highest price ever. And if it goes down, you can buy a bit more and your average price will be below the highest price ever in both sets of circumstances. So don't rush in. Buy a little bit so that you don't feel that you're the world's greatest fool.
And I'm going to say one more thing about what the question of miners versus physical gold. If you buy physical gold or you buy physical silver, one thing has to happen for you to make a profit. The price has to rise. You won't make a profit if the price stands still. However, what about the miners? The gold and silver miners are all going to produce much higher profits next quarter and the many for many quarters to come if the gold and silver prices stand still. So all we need is for the gold and silver mine or gold and silver prices to stand still from here and mining companies are going to be reported reporting for many quarters to come much higher profits and those profits are almost certainly I mean it's like 100% certain in almost every case going to be much higher than is currently forecast by the analysts. Most of the forecasts made by analysts were made two or three months ago. They were made two or three months ago at the time those companies brought out their last earnings reports. So silver might have been around $40 or $50 if you're lucky, but no, probably not even probably $30ome. And the gold price would have been pushing through uh $4,000 and certainly not $5,000 where we are today. So those forecasts which were made two or three months ago are very out ofd and when the miners announce their next set of results which for many will be the results for the full year probably announced in February or March in many cases those results are going to at least for the last quarter of 2025 look better than they were for the last quarter of 2024 and for the first quarter of 2026 which will be announced in um May June area and for the quarter beyond that those results are all going to look spectacular compared with the previous year. So I just going to repeat if the gold price stands still you won't make any money holding gold. If the gold price stands still and you hold gold miners, they will be reporting almost certainly much higher profits. I personally think there's still a lot of catchup to be done in the gold and silver mining sector. But this is not an investment recommendation. In fact, nothing I'm saying in this video is supposed to be an investment recommendation. But you can certainly go and look at the mining sector and see if you want to have a little bit of exposure there as well. Um, this is not investment advice, but uh and by the way, I'm not buying uh I'm not buying or selling anything related to gold and I haven't done so in months. Uh, but I did hear on a recent video that Rick Rule, who did sell some of his silver, deployed most of the proceeds, or part of the proceeds anyway, into silver miners. He thinks that's where the pro most profit will be.
Ladies and gentlemen, my name is Clive Thompson. Thank you very much for listening. Don't forget to like and subscribe if you can. Thank you very much. Like and subscribe. I'll just put that up. Like and subscribe. There we are. That's what you need to do. Bye-bye, everybody.