Transcription
If Ted Butler were still with us today, I know I'd have to fly down to Jupiter, Florida to peel him off the ceiling. That's how absolutely off-the-wall bullish this is. So, we have low total open interest, a wildly bullish setup in the ComX futures market, the lowest short position held by the by the eight largest traders in history. And uh I'm sure when the bank participation report comes out this Friday, we'll see that that the US bullion banks have held the lowest short position in silver on record. So the stage is set for an absolute moonshot rally in all four precious metals and a whole bunch of other commodities.
This is Kaiser Johnson with Liberty and Finance and these are the Miles Franklin weekly specials for April 6th through April 13th, 2026 while supplies last. First this week, 1oz gold Kruegerand are just $80 over spot per ounce. 1oz silver philarmonics are just $5.99 over spot per ounce. And dealers's choice 100 silver assorted bars are just $3.75 over spot per ounce. To order our specials or any of the many other options we have available, call us at 188881 Liberty. That's 188815-4237. We're available after hours and on weekends, and we look forward to speaking with you.
Welcome back to Liberty and Finance. I'm honored as always to have this widely followed and legendary returning guest, Ed Steer, joins us today. We're recording this Wednesday, April 8th, 2026. Ed, thank you for coming back on Liberty and Finance.
Well, thank you. I don't know about the legendary part, but um glad to be back then again.
Well, you certainly cast a long shadow. We were directed your way by uh David Morgan of the morganreport.com following the um untimely passing of our mutual friend Rob Kirby and Ted Butler. Uh after Ted Butler passed, uh I interviewed David in memoriam for Ted and and David said, "Listen, if you really want to know who's carrying on a lot of the work that Ted did and following um along that pathway of diligence, it's Ed. you really got to talk to Ed. So that's why we've had you here many times and we are grateful for that. We wanted at this time of geopolitical turmoil to have you weigh in on what you're seeing on the major um impacts on the metals exchanges. You watch the COMX, you watch London, uh you watch the price action, you watch the inventories. We want to touch base on all of those. Uh first of all, it's the elephant in the room is that we saw a remarkable volatility in gold and silver uh after a historic runup uh through through January of this year and then a a rapid selloff and then what happened when this war or not war conflict started in Iran was rather remarkable. We want to get some some comments from you on that. But then now a ceasefire after what could have been a dramatic escalation um had some effects as well. We want to get your your updates on all of the above. Could you start with the parallels you saw between the market action on this latest uh ceasefire event compared to at the start of the conflict?
Well, you know, the whole thing is so counterintuitive. I I mean when you have a major conflict break out in the Middle East and the oil producing countries and the straits of Hormuz get closed. I mean this is a major major geopolitical event and you would think that you know that the dollar index would crash and the precious metals would go screaming higher but you know it was exactly the opposite of that. You know the uh powers that be came in and killed the precious metals just to ensure that nobody would use it as a safe haven. And of course they ran the uh the dollar index higher. So um everybody would uh instead of running out of the stock market and other things and into gold and silver they would run into paper assets instead. We've seen this before and uh they were quite successful at and of course when peace broke out last night you know and the oil price crashed by I don't know 17 18 I don't know it's it's down a large percentage today. I haven't checked yet, but uh you know on on peace and good news and sunshine and moon beams and uh things like that, you expect that precious metals prices would crash, but instead they took off higher like a scalded cat. And they were up big last night, but then again, now I'm looking at the prices right now and uh you know, they've uh they've managed to get them down quite a bit lower, although they are off their lows of the day. So what we're seeing out there is totally counterintuitive to what should be happening. And the only reason it's happening that way is because of the u the continued action of the large commercial traders, the big eight commercial traders in the comx futures market that they control the price uh um up and when it's going up and when it's going down and we saw, you know, prime example of that surrounding this war.
Uh what about the counterintuit? You mentioned counterintuitive. I assume what you're referring to is that normally in times of turmoil and trouble, you expect to see a flight to safety into uh safe harbor assets like gold and silver that are going to be hedges and protection against volatility. Um isn't there also at the same time the uh the flight to liquidity by those in need?
Well, yeah, but it isn't going to be instantaneous. I mean, if you're going to go to liquidity, they're going to go to um they're going to go to safe harbors, okay? And the safe harbor is gold and silver. And they just wanted to make sure that that didn't happen. I mean, I've seen that excuse used on the internet ever since that happened. But it's totally counterintuitive. You know, if you have got something major like that happening, you know, that's the first thing it would show up. It would show up in the precious metals and uh there was somebody there to to make sure it didn't. Simple as that.
This um mantra of the management of price action on the major exchanges by the bullion banks in the west has been something that Bill Murphy has talked about, Ted Butler railed against, and you've talked with us about. The counterargument for that as far as a prognosis going forward is that that only works as long as you have the physical to stand behind those those naked shorts. Can you give us an update on what the physical inventory flows uh are looking like to you and whether you subscribe to that idea that this scheme, this mechanism uh is heading towards a a pot running dry or boil boiling dry and then that that that mechanism won't work anymore after a certain point.
Yeah. Well, you know, I just want to go back to what you said about Bill Murphy and Chris Powell and everybody else. you know, um this is this price management speak scheme in gold has been going on since I think it was 1975 when it first started 4 years after uh the United States went off the gold exchange standard and they've been controlling the price in the paper market ever since. I sent you a link to an article I wrote last year called the gold price manipulation the London bias where it shows you what uh what the price action is between the ComX close in New York and the uh London open the following day and then the price action between the London open and the comx close and it's prices are always rising in the Far East and always falling in the west it's that's been that way for what 1975 that's 50ome years so I mean it is so obvious obvious and like you know I sent you the link and if you'd be kind enough to stick that in the remarks under the um the video it would be a real useful primer for everybody to take a look at.
We'll add that to the description under this video uh on every platform guys. Look in the description you'll see the link to the article that Ed shared with us called the London bias. Go ahead.
Yeah it's certainly worth reading. You know, and as far as what's going on right now, everybody knows out there that, you know, we're in the sixth year of a silver structural deficit in silver. And the only reason that the prices aren't allowed to reflect that is because of the paper manipulation. And we saw, you know, like you talk talked about at the top of the show where, you know, silver prices started rising last year and then kept going higher and higher and higher and resulting in, you know, $120 silver price at the end of January. And um the reason for that rally was twofold. And I keep religious track of this uh in the commitment of traders report every week is that the US bullion banks so the eight large let me put rephrase that the eight largest traders have reduced their short position in silver since about last July by about 40,000 contracts. the only way you can cover a short position is either deliver into it or buy a long offsetting long contract and that's what they were doing from about July onwards. So that was contributing mightily to the price rise and of course once the price once the momentum gets building then you get the speculators piling in. And that happened in the last month where it you know where it went from like I don't know $70 to $120 in a month. And uh you know all that silver was doing was trying to reach its intrinsic value. And everybody out there knows including you, me and all your listeners is that you know the silver should be at some spectacular three-digit price you know to reflect the fact that we have this ongoing structural deficit. But it's just not being allowed to manifest itself in the prices. So, you know, this has been going on for, you know, a long time. And that's why we had that run up to 120. And then, of course, the powers that be, the big eight commercial traders came in there and just absolutely hammered it lower. And uh, you know, we've been up and down and up and down since. And we've had that counterintuitive rally on the start of the war and then the or the takedown at the start of the war and the rally at the end of it yesterday. And, uh, this is just all paper shenanigans. This has nothing to do with supply and demand. Everybody knows that the supply is shrinking and that the demand is either uh the demand is is going up every year, you know, and you asked about the, you know, what's going on with the inventory warehouse stocks. It's something I keep track of to the ounce every day in both China and uh and in on the ComX. And I have the numbers right here because I was getting ready for the show. So far this year, okay, uh in silver in the com, this is the Comx warehouse stocks, there have been 16.2 million ounces of silver shipped into the ComX, but 139.6 million have been shipped out. That's that that's a huge amount. The drain on the COMX is just relentless. It's and it's been going on for many more months before this started a year. And something that isn't talked about is gold. The amount of gold leaving the comx is, you know, off the charts, too. So far in in uh 2026, only 385,000 troy ounces been received, which is about, I don't know, 12 tons, something like that. But six over 6 million ounces has been shipped out of gold of gold has been shipped out of the comx so far this year. That's a huge amount. You know, that's approaching uh almost 200 tons. That's a lot. And uh segueing over to China, uh although their inventories have been rising gradually for the last month or so, the the inventories at the Shanghai Gold Exchange and the Shanghai Futures Exchange are at 10 plus year lows. So I mean there's not a lot of silver out of there, silver anywhere, and it's going, you know, it's slowly but surely uh heading out the door. And as far as London is concerned and it London is totally opaque. Ted Butler, you know, didn't even try to keep track of what was going on out there because you just can't believe anything the LBMA says. However, you know, like last October, everybody found out all of a sudden there were just wasn't any silver that was available for delivery and they came close to having to go force majour on it and that was another, you know, um more gas on the fire to light up the uh to the rally in the silver market. So you can see that the everything is the silver is slowly but surely disappearing and uh the demand uh is higher than supply and it's been that way for 6 plus years. I was on the silver institute website earlier this morning and they're projecting a silver deficit for 2026 of 67 million ounces and that has to be provided by above ground stocks from somebody and those somebodyies are the bullion banks in New York principally JP Morgan but you know they're just not allowing this structural deficit uh to be reflected in the price it tried in January got up to 120 but uh here we are today as silver what at $73 an ounce and frankly should be five or six times that uh that price right now based on the supply demand demand fundamentals have been going on for you know better part of a half a decade now.
The you just mentioned in there uh you you you can either cover uh with your shorts by following up with physical to satisfy them or by sell by going long with balancing uh contracts in the futures what are you seeing with all these physical outflows and dropping physical inventories on the various exchanges. When do you see that trajectory approaching a limit where it forces the hand where the game has to change in some way and do you have options of what what the structural change in the game could be when that happens?
Well, it'll become to the point where uh somebody who is long demands delivery from the shorts and they don't have it and can't get it and the short will have to go into the market and buy the physical uh in the spot market and you'll see it in the price immediately. Uh you know, we saw signs of that earlier this, you know, in January and late last year. So, you know, there's there's a lot of there's a lot of signs that it's there, but it's up to the CME group. the CE group uh you know keeps a very tight reign on their on their uh on their members and if somebody is short and the long demands uh long demands delivery the first thing to do is the CME gets on the horn to the short calls them up and said do you have the physical to back this and of course the CME will know whether they got it or not because they keep records of this sort of thing but one of these days that somebody's going to demand a huge amount of silver from the comx and the the longs the shorts aren't going to be able delivered. It's as simple as that. And we'll see it the price.
Um you you your first part of the question is that there's two ways for a person that is um short to cover. Okay. If you're short a contract, there's two ways of covering it. You can either deliver the physical mill um or you can buy a long long offsetting long contract to cover it that way. And here's the thing that most people don't most people don't know is that most of the traders that are that are trading in the ComX futures market, their charters or their prospectuses do not allow them to take physical delivery. It's it's just strictly a paper game for them. So if you get into the managed money traders or the other reportables or the small traders, most of these guys are playing the the paper game. And I have a lot of my subscribers that play the comx futures market never have any intention of taking delivery and can't if they had to, you know. So even if they're long, the short can't deliver into them because they're not allowed to take the they're not allowed to take physical delivery. So that forces who is ever short. uh they may have all the silver in the world. They have may have 100 million ounces of silver to deliver. But if the long can't accept delivery because of their charter or the regulations, then they have to to cover that short, they have to go and buy the paper contract to cover it, which of course drives up the price. So it's it's a very complex system on the inside. It's very simple, but very complex. And uh sooner or later and and as we've seen a couple of times in the last year, there have been issues for the shorts delivering to the longs. And these are what I call minor seismic events before we get to the really big one. And we had a major earthquake u starting in January. And it's just a matter of when the next earthquake is going to show up and whether it's going to be the big one or not.
A couple comments for you on our questions. Uh, one is that in in late January and following, we we saw on particularly on up days versus down days claims made by the COMX that there were system problems, whether it was actual computer was overheating in in server farms that that prevented uh them to be able to to track uh upwards when the there was upward pressure. But then the opposite. Oh, the uh the circuit breakers that were supposed to arrest downward plunges didn't didn't work or there was some some very fine-tuned loopholes about how to get it reset and then go on further down the next step because there was a 70 millisecond delay before it happened again. Um and allowed. So in other words, downward action was allowed, upward action was not allowed. Secondarily, we saw on the COMX or was sorry, the London nickel market a few years ago that rather than what you've been proposing here is that it the na natural course of events is when there's a an honest to gosh physical uh short squeeze that there has to be covering and that becomes rocket fuel for the price. that instead when that started to happen on the nickel market, we saw the exchange just blow the whistle, cancel trades, and roll things back and say, "Sorry, you're not going to get to have the advantage over these uh privileged, you know, elite members of the club." Can you can you address those two points of the the exchanges showing uh no rule of law in the sense that that there can be these other other reasons excuses given why it doesn't behave uh the way supply and demand should cause it to.
Well, you know, all these little technical things that'll come along with this problem here, whether it be cooling or this or that or dropouts or the market, you know, shut down for, you know, 9 hours or whatever the heck it is. You know, these all stink to high heaven. You know, it's sort of like the there's smoke out there. If there's smoke, there's fire. Um, you know, this is this is, you know, they're getting they're getting more and more uh frequent. And as you pointed out, the LM nickel um example was uh was a case in point where the shorts could not deliver to the longs and so the LM stepped in and cancelled all the trades. And of course that did enormous damage to the reputation of the London Metals exchange and I don't know if they fully recovered from that or not. I just don't know. The ComX uh could they do that? Well, they did that back in the 198081 for the Hunt brothers and I remember that because I was I was I was a buyer and seller of silver at that time too when I was much younger. So yes, can the can this com exchange rule? Yes, they certainly can. And as Ted Butler told me many times over the years, the sole purpose of the Chicago Mercantile Exchange, the CME Group, is to protect the large traders. So if if things push really become shove, it wouldn't surprise me at all if they stepped in in front of the market and says, "I'm sorry. You know, we're just not going to allow this to happen." However, the difference between the LME and the Comx are enormous cuz most of the prices of the major commodities in the world are set on the Comx and if they stepped in front of this freight train and tried to stop it, I think it would do reparable damage. And what would happen then, I've speculated on this before as have others, is that if the COMX decides to step in and uh you know, stop whatever price trend is in place like we saw in silver at the end of January, but did it officially said no, we're not going to complete these trades that I think you would see the end of it would be pretty much the end of the comics as we know it as a price setting mechanism and the chances are excellent that it would uh the price mechanism would automatically transfer over to uh the Shanghai Gold Exchange, which is where it belongs. Anyway,
what are we seeing on the We We've been talking about uh a persistent arbitrage uh delta between prices on these two exchanges. What are you seeing? Is there a trend? Does this have anything to do with the with the remaining physical availability for offtaking on either of these exchanges? What are the major dynamics that are affecting that?
Yeah. Well, you know, this it's something I post in my column every day. Um um yesterday I just got let me just scroll down and find it for you cuz it's not very difficult. The the Shanghai US silver price premium yesterday was 12.39%. You know, and it's been persistently in the 10 12 13 14% range. It got up to almost 20 uh back in January when things re really became dicey and then it fell back to almost zero for it was only about 2 or 3 weeks but then it inched its way back up and now it's back above 12%. So you know the the price to buy silver in in Shanghai is and there's also GST or you know a sales tax on top of that as well. So, you know, it the uh the premium in in in Shanghai in silver is is always around 10 or 12%. So, the the the price pressure for higher price for silver has been coming out of China now for many many years. And uh it's it's been almost it's been persistent except for the odd time for for quite some time. And like I said, you know, it's a it's a magnet to draw silver to China. and uh so far it's working and uh but it's not being allowed to be reflected into the price at the moment.
How about the uh physical outflows from the comx? Uh we've heard various calculations of how many weeks for example would be remaining at the current rates of depletion before the comx run dry or or London run dry or Shanghai run dry. Um, do you see a a uh pivot that the the holders or the managers of these exchanges are able to do to liberate or to provide more physical liquidity when necessary to p to persist at that at that uh availability that enables them to keep doing this price fixing action?
Well, you know, right now I'm looking at the ComX silver uh silver inventories which were posted at noon today. Uh well 3:00 your time, noon my time and it shows in the registered CR 77 million ounces which has been shrinking slowly but surely for many months now. And u you know the deliveries which are ongoing you know every day of of the year. Uh this is not a a scheduled delivery month for silver. It was March and the next one is coming up in May. And uh right now there's more than enough there to meet. Remember that this silver that's sitting in the register or in the alge wherever it is when it when it uh when there's delivery asked for it by the the long holder demands delivery from the shorts. This is all that's happening is that the p the uh the tags on the pallets of silver and the comx warehouse change owners. That's all that happens. The silver doesn't go anywhere. But you know but as you have pointed out and as others have pointed out you know this the amount in the registered category which is what available for delivery continues to shrink and shrink and shrink and in the other category which is the eligible category this is silver that's not for temp not at the moment available for sale at this price or maybe at any price and it's belong to long it owns by long-term holders and they're not prepared to sell. They're like you me and everybody else listening to this podcast. They're waiting for whatever fantastic silver price eventually shows up, you know, some three-digit number. And um there's 248 million ounces in that category. And whether or not they're prepared to sell at the current price when the delivery date comes around, that's entirely up to them. Is the Chicago Merkantile Exchange can't go to somebody who's in the eligible category and say, "Would you We're going to transfer your silver over into regards. who want to deliver the eligible the person in the eligible category which owns this stuff has the long contract on it would tell them to go to hell and u rightfully so. So, you know, there's only there's only a 77 million ounces sitting there and it keeps draining away and draining away and it's all part of, you know, the physical process that, you know, we've all been watching for the last, you know, 3, four, five, six years where the inventories are going down, down, down. And in the registered category, it's exactly the same. And when it when they uh gets to the point where there's not enough registered uh who knows what's going to happen, but you know, it's going to be the uh it's going to be the mother of all rallies when uh they run out of silver either in Comx or in London or Shanghai or whatever or Switzerland. You know, the drip drip drip is there and uh all the signs are pointing that uh we're going to run out of this stuff sooner or later, but the paper hangers in New York won't allow it to be reflected in the price and we saw classic case of that again today.
As you look at this, as newbies come in, people who are waking up just now, they're hearing maybe from their family members or co-workers, friends, neighbors that they should be or even in some enlightened financial planners telling people they at least should have exposure. We've even heard those coming from some rather on high uh voices who have real influence and are on the mainstream financial press saying that there should be exposure to gold by uh many classes of investors much more than had previously been considered. What is your uh message to those who are just waking up, just entering this and wondering know where should they get started and uh and what should they consider uh doing to make sure that they have some protection uh rather than none which is what evidently most people have from the degradation of the dollar?
Well, the first thing that people have to do is they have to decide okay whether they want paper gold or real gold. And my advice to everybody is the same thing. gold and silver in hand is not somebody else's simultaneously somebody else's liability where any paper asset is. So, uh that's my first advice to anybody is is invest your money in in physical metal in hand first and once you've uh you've got an adequate amount and and it's you're today's price is as good entry point as you're going to find anywhere as far as I'm concerned especially in silver. So, you know, if you want to invest today, this would be a good day to do it. And uh then you can decide whether you want to invest in uh paper, gold or silver. Uh uh and some funds are better than others as far as I'm concerned. And then of course there's the entire spectrum of the uh precious metals equities which u you know which are highly lever or supposed to be highly leveraged the price in silver and gold but over the last three or four months of any have been anything but. It's been really sad to watch the way that u not only have the powers of be managed to precious metal prices but they've also managed the prices of the shares as well.
Well, it sounds like in that case then that value opportunity persists the the train hasn't necessarily left the station for those who are just getting just waking up at this time.
Not at all. Not at all, Donn. There's still lots of room. this this this bull market if it's allowed to unfold the way it should is you know it's got many years left to run and like everybody said you me and everybody else you've ever had on your podcast is that you know silver should be at some fantastic three-digit price already and it's not being allowed to do that. So that's um you know if I had uh if I was selling somebody with $1,000 in their hand uh right now I say go out and buy $1,000 worth of silver and uh forget you own it because that's where the real returns are going to be down the road.
And Ed, before we let you go, I wanted to give you a chance if there's anything that we didn't talk about that is on your mind that you'd like to share with our viewers, please go right ahead.
Oh, well, thank you for that invitation and there certainly is a few things that I want to talk about. Uh the first thing uh is um what's called open interest. That's the number of longs and the number of shorts that are u currently in the comx futures market in both gold and silver. Like for every long contract, there has to be a short and vice versa. So open interest right now in uh in silver yesterday was um let me just take a look here at the number right here. 114,379 contracts. So there's 114,000 longs and 114,000 short contracts. This is the lowest the open interest. In other words, the amount of interest there is in in speculative activity or any activity in silver right now is the lowest it's been since 2012. That's 14 years ago. And in gold, it's even worse. It goes back to 2009, which is 17 years ago. So the the markets there's just no interest by the speculators by anybody in owning gold. And here we are at gold at almost 5,000 and silver over $70 and there's just no interest in the market. These are numbers which you know are historically low uh and uh at when they're always when they're this low this is this is the you know the start of you know when the next rally begins. It's going to be really amazing to watch cuz there's lots of speculators that can pile on. We could double the open interest in silver and still not be at its highs from what they were a year ago. So from an open interest perspective, the market is wildly bullish. And secondly, and even more important is what the big eight traders are up to. These are the big shorts. These are the boys. These are the guys that control the silver price. You want to know what happened to the silver and gold price in space on Wednesday today? What happened is is it's these guys coming into the market and selling and buying and controlling the price on the way up and controlling the price on the way down. They're short position. In other words, they they've been mega short the market for for like 50 years. And you know, thanks to Ted Butler, I've been following this now for like 20 plus years. And the the short positions held by the largest traders, the eight largest traders, the guys that control the price in silver, they're the lowest on record. And in gold, they're very close to the lowest on record. I've never seen numbers like this before, ever. And like I said on my column a couple of times, you know, if Ted Butler were still with us today, I know I'd have to fly down to Jupiter, Florida to peel them off the ceiling. That's how absolutely off-the-wall bullish this is. So, we have low total open interest, a wildly bullish setup in the ComX futures market, the lowest short position held by the by the eight largest traders in history. And uh I'm sure when the bank participation report comes out this Friday, we'll see that that the US bullion banks have held the lowest short position in silver on record. So, the stage is set for an absolute moonshot rally in all four precious metals and a whole bunch of other commodities when the boys decide they're going to let the silver price go. I thought last night at when the Comx opened at 6:00 on Tuesday night that maybe this was the start of it, but no, it wasn't. But, um, everything is set up for the biggest rallies in the precious metals and since I've been following these markets the last 25 years.
Ed, for people who want to get closer connected with you and the writing that you do and the analysis that you do on a weekly basis, how should they find you?
Well, they can just Google my name, Ed Steer, Ster Ed Steer, Gold and Silver. Uh my website will pop up and there's a tab on there for a free sample column and you can click on that and that shows you the kind of content that you get from me uh 5 days a week uh uh 52 weeks a year. And if that sort of information, which is very detailed and very factual, there's no wild ass speculation in here. It's just the fact. If that's the sort of thing that interests you, then um you can sign up and the cost is uh US $100 a year for about 260 260 uh columns.
We've been speaking with Ed Steer and uh Ed, as always, just on behalf of all of our viewers and subscribers, I learn every time we talk and I'm sure that most do as well. and uh just grateful for you spending the time with us again today. We know you have a very heavy workload with your analysis and writing schedule and thanks for taking time out for us here on Liberty and Finance.
Entire of my pleasure, Dunigan.
This is Kaiser Johnson with Liberty and Finance and these are the Miles Franklin weekly specials for April 6th through April 13th, 2026 while supplies last. First this week, 1oz gold Kruegerand are just $80 over a spot per ounce. 1oz silver philill harmonics are just $5.99 over spot per ounce and dealer's choice 100 silver assorted bars are just $3.75 over spot per ounce to order our specials or any of the many other options we have available. Call us at 188881 Liberty. That's 1888154237. We're available after hours and on weekends and we look forward to speaking with you.