[0:00]Well, can we now put all the hype behind the expiration of the March contract in Silver behind us after yesterday's occurrences. That's what I want to talk about today in addition to where we're at right now. Today, by the way, is Wednesday, February the 25th of 2026. It's about an hour and a half before the markets close in New York. They'll take a breather for an hour and then they'll open up again on the overseas markets at 5:00 Eastern Standard Time. But today, we've had a pretty good day so far. We opened up at $87.1, dropped to $86.48. And then we've been as high as $91.42 for the day, which is above this range we established way back on February the 5th. But right now, it's settling down back below this range. As a matter of fact, we're below $90 by just a few pennies as I speak. And so, it's been a a pretty active day and yet it's been kind of uh quiet from the New York standpoint because most of the activity occurred overseas before our markets even opened. And we really haven't moved more than a dollar or two since the New York market opened this morning. And so, that's where we're at right now. Again, we've been looking at a range right, right, uh, I guess for the last nearly three weeks now that has gone about from $70 to $90. And we can see the low and the high that we've been looking at this whole time. We tested the low one time, it plunged down below that, but manipulation had been found to occur. Illegal manipulation at that, it was shut down and it only traded down below this $70.86 line, uh, for just a few minutes before it popped back up. And it's been in a pretty strong range, one of the strongest I've seen in quite some time, uh, since that point. And so, again, we've been going along for about three weeks. We're starting to test seriously the upper end of this range. We haven't broken through it yet. I mean, we've popped over it, but, but as far as really breaking out, uh, from the top of the range, we have not done that. And again, we're below this $90.51 level right now. So, uh, just kind of, uh, keep, keep all that in mind. Obviously, these uh videos get left up and so if you're wondering, uh about, uh, historical, uh, events, you can kind of go back and look at some of these very basic charts. I've I've had a lot of people ask me about these charts. I realize they're very simplistic in nature. I've been using them for several decades now. I think it was Larry Williams, a a commodity, uh, trader, uh, whose course I took a number of years ago that I learned this particular, uh, chart from. It's just a vertical bar graph showing the day's activity and the left, uh shows the opening and the right, uh ear shows the closing. And then the upper and bottom obviously are self-explanatory. And so, this is the, the type of a chart that I can, I can look at very quickly and just kind of get in one glance what the market's been doing. And so, hopefully you found it helpful as well. But this is where we're at. Maybe we can get rid of this chart. We're definitely going to have to do something about it. Even if we've, we've continued to fall below this range because I've just flat out run out of room and my wife doesn't like me to draw on the walls. So, we'll figure out something different, uh, in the future as far as this particular chart, but again, just notice a very nice trading range that we've had. It has not helped us from a physical standpoint as far as you wouldn't want to buy and sell physical metal in this particular range, uh, because you would lose out on the commissions, on the spreads that the dealers would be willing to pay you. Uh, but you can trade stocks if you do that, or futures if you do that. I wouldn't recommend it unless you're just really, uh, wanting to add more excitement to your life than a human being should should have. But but uh, that's the chart and we're going to go ahead and take that down for now and talk about some uh, other things that I think are are relatively important for us to be thinking about right now. Uh, first of all, I want to, uh, really, uh, give some appreciation to a gentleman by the name of Clive Thompson. Clive is an Englishman, obviously from the name, uh, who has really put a a a spotlight on the deliveries in the March contract. And he pointed out that, uh, there was such a high volume of open interest for a while and such a, uh, starting to become a lower amount of silver available for delivery that there could be a problem. And of course, as the date has approached, it's become less and less of a problem, uh, until, uh, today, it seems like it's not really going to be a problem. But I'm not really sure that that's true, that it's not a problem. And and let me just kind of, uh, tell you where we're at on the, uh, March contract. Uh, yesterday our volume for the futures market on the Comex was 125,000, uh, contracts, or a little over 625 million ounces of silver. That's a pretty healthy day. That's been about average for the last couple of months and certainly the highest volume, uh, that we've had, or one of the higher volumes that we've had in the last couple of weeks. And so, uh, on that day, uh, we had a pretty good rise. Um, in the last, uh, week, but yesterday we actually settled down at a lower, uh, point than we had the day before, but still, we settled at $87. And so, uh, it we did pretty well during yesterday, though. We started off the day, uh, quite a bit higher on our open interest, uh, for the March contract. Uh, the March contract at the end of the day ended up at 21,882 contracts, which was down a massive 15,280 contracts, or down 76 million ounces that we're no longer on the hook for having to be, uh, provided in a delivery should the longs decide to take that silver. And so, right now, what we have is basically 109 million ounces of silver. The open interest for the March contracts represents 109 million ounces of silver. Yesterday, the report was that we had a little over 87 million ounces on the Comex in the registered form. That was down a million from the day before, but the eligible category went up a million. So it just appears that out of those 12, uh, depositories, uh, that the Comex uses that just people within those depositories moved their silver from the registered category, where they would have to sell it if they still had it in the registered category on Friday to where now they don't have to if they don't want to because they've moved it into the eligible. But right now, there's 87 million, or there was yesterday. This particular, um, uh, depository, uh, is not really, uh, given, I don't think a very favorable time during the day. They're not going to release yesterday's closing, uh, vault depository until sometime later on this evening. And so, it would have been really helpful to have known of that 76 million, uh, ounces that were removed from the March delivery. How many, if any, actually came out of the Comex? If there's actually, uh, been a a drawdown in the registered category. Now, I realize that they couldn't have taken it out of the registered category on the March contract, but there are other things they can do. There was I think over 100 contracts added to the February open interest just yesterday. So we know that just right there there was about a half a million ounces, uh, taken, uh, for the February contract. And so, that would account for part of it if indeed that's what where it came from. But again, does this, uh, signify that we're really not going to have any future delivery problems? And the answer to that is no, it really doesn't. What this particular contract I believe did was it put a a much needed focus upon the supply and demand, uh, within the silver market worldwide. And and by doing so, I believe a lot of people are starting to take a much stronger look at what silver is really available in the Comex and therefore what silver is available, uh, on the London Exchange, the LBMA. And for those in the Asian markets over in China for for what's, uh, available on the Shanghai market. Of course, the Shanghai market, even though it's, uh, uh, uh, done probably 50% or more, uh, of their market is actually physical, it really doesn't affect the Western markets as far as the amount of silver that's available to them. Because China has put export, uh, uh, restrictions on that to where they can't take their silver out of the nation without approval of the government. And I can assure you the Chinese government's not going to be doing any favors to anybody on that. But what can happen, even with the VAT taxes that they have over there, what can happen is there can be arbitrage for people on the Western markets see the premium that Shanghai is offering and go ahead and move some of their silver over there to take advantage of that arbitrage. It's fairly narrow right now. The premium in the VAT may be pretty close together, but it's still, I'm sure being done to a certain extent. And so, anyway, we've now got the focus on the fact that the supply, the worldwide supply is much lower than it has been in a long time. I've heard some people talk about, well, that's just not true that the Comex supplies are just incredibly high when you look at the eligible category and the registered category. True enough from a historic standpoint, uh, that is true, but when you look at last year, the Comex delivered over twice of what is normally delivered physical deliveries on the Comex last year, then it's typically done in a regular year. Uh, and so, as a matter of fact, if you compare last year's delivery, 2025 to 2024 and 2023, it was more than those two years combined. And you had to add, uh, nearly half again the silver that was delivered in 2022 in order to match all the silver that was delivered just last year. So, the Comex is starting to shift from primarily a hedging instrument and a hedging market to one that's more and more of a physical market, as was witnessed by nearly half a billion ounces of silver being taken off of the Comex last year. And and let that sink in for a moment because the annual world mining supply is about 830 million ounces of silver. Well, they took off 400 and I can't remember, uh, close to 500 million ounces last year. And so, well over 50% of the world's mining supply, that equivalent was taken off of the Comex market last year on physical deliveries. And so, now we've got this spotlight starting to be shown upon not only the Comex, but also the LBMA. We know what the problems were on the LBMA last year. They said that they they just couldn't make their deliveries on time, not because they didn't have the silver, we promise, uh, but because that the the silver bars and the gold bars were very, very heavy. And apparently this was just brand new news to them after, uh, having this market open for over a hundred years. And so, they just decided that it would take longer to to make delivery last year. That slopped a lot over onto the Comex, which was able to deliver a little bit quicker. Uh, but my point is we're starting to see some anomalies we've never seen. Certainly the price action that we have seen in the last three months is never been, uh, beheld before. And maybe this is another point that would be really good to, uh, keep in mind. Today, as I speak, we're probably, uh, before I started filming this, we were at 2:30 Central Standard Time, and we were just off of $90 an ounce. Well, $90 an ounce was not achieved on the spot market until January the 14th of this year. And the price only remained above $90 for 16 days. On January the 30th, it got as high, I think that day is 121 and some change, and then it dropped like a rock to where there was a $45 high to low difference. Until, uh, February the 4th, we didn't get back above $90 and we only did that for a very brief amount of time on February the 4th and February the 5th. And so, today, we have the market over $90 again, or we did for a little bit, whether that will hold or not, only time will tell. By the time you watch this, it may be so far below 90, or so far above 90 that it'll be a moot point. But the thing I really wanted to to to make a, to to underscore is this. We're still in rarified air. It may seem like we're way, way down below where we had been. And if you just look at a couple week period, I suppose you could say that we are. But other than that, we are way, way, way above where we have been historically. $90 is an incredible mark. And when you think that $70, that $70 level was tested over and over and it held through all of this. And now we're about $20 over that $70 level. It does look like we're starting to re-calibrate at a much higher figure. This time last year, we were at about $30, and $30 while it wasn't a floor, you could probably say $20 or $25 was at that time. Now, we're looking at a $40 to $50 higher floor. Now, that can change. We all understand that. If you've been in the silver market, you have to understand that it can change in a hurry, but we are looking at a time, a period of history that we've never experienced before. And so, having $90 an ounce silver is pretty significant. And with that $90 an ounce silver and the stress that we're starting to see, uh, with the supply demand issue, with the demand on the industrial side, starting to outweigh the supply on the mining and and, uh, recycling side. And having done that for five years straight now, running into our sixth year, we really are in a different situation than we have ever been before. This is new territory. How will things shake out? Who knows? But one of the things you can say is we do appear to be very strong from a supply demand, uh, perspective. And so, for those of you who are just saving in silver, I I wouldn't get real concerned about the fact that the, uh, that the coin dealers are not offering what you can, uh, see the spot price for, or that they're sometimes offering way below that. If you're not planning on selling, don't don't sell it to him anyway. But for those who have been very concerned about the liquidity, while the liquidity is, uh, starting to, to become a problem as far as they're there are fewer buyers at this, uh, price point. The fact is there are still buyers. I saw one, uh, from Florida just this morning offering to buy generic 999 silver at $3 below spot. Now, that's not bad. That's a fair offer, historically. And so, for those of you who have been very, very much, uh, concerned that you cannot sell your silver right now. Just look around. You've you've got some money there. It doesn't hurt for you to shop if you do need to sell. And it could it could involve a significant amount of money for you if you would just put a little bit of time and effort into it. But maybe one of the most important things for us all to do is to to maybe not focus so much on what isn't working as what is working. Find the dealers that are treating you fair now and establish a relationship with them. I believe you'll be very satisfied that you that you did. I've been dealing, uh, with the same dealer in Amarillo, Texas since 1995. I don't deal exclusively with him by any stretch of the imagination. But I deal very consistently, uh, with him and I've made a number of sales last year, uh, uh, through his shop. And so, uh, just get you a good, uh, working relationship with a dealer. And stop being so concerned about the things that you are hearing that you cannot sell your silver, or that everybody's just out to cheat you. Everybody's not out to cheat you and you can sell your silver, but you might have to do a little homework on it. But if that homework will pay you $2 or $3,000 at different times, then why not go ahead and do your homework like a man, or like a woman. And and stop, uh, being so concerned about the things that aren't suiting you quite quite as well. Now, now, just a a couple of more points, uh, on on all this. The March contract is largely rolled over now into the May contract. There are currently, uh, 21,000, nearly 22,000 open contracts as of this morning. Surely some of them will have rolled over or have been bought out by the end of the day. And so, we appear to be okay on March, but May is starting to look like a pretty big month in and of itself.
[19:10]And there's going to be more question come in May. My encouragement to you will be to not get too caught up with the hype for the May delivery. You might have for the March delivery. We've certainly talked about it a lot on this channel and a lot of other, uh, YouTubers have as well. And so, it it's not that you don't want to look at it and look at it honestly, but don't get caught up in the hype. What will happen will happen. And the fact of the matter is if you're just saving in silver right now, if you're just stacking for the future, whether as an insurance policy or savings for a known event that you have coming up years down the road. Or or if you just want something that that is set aside for your children and your grandchildren, then then just take advantage of the dips when they do, uh, fall. Keep on buying on your dollar cost averaging. When when you think the prices are a little bit too high, don't get anything extra then if if it doesn't seem prudent to do so. And if you're not selling anyway, then don't think about selling just because the prices are kind of high right now. However, if you have a plan, a predetermined plan where you were going to sell at certain points, then by all means, don't alter that plan for this time anyway. There's always going to be something going on. There is turmoil in the Middle East right now. There is turmoil in Mexico right now. There's turmoil over uh near Russia right now. There's always going to be something. And all these things can and sometimes do affect gold and silver. But but uh, those those events come and go. What you're wanting to do if you have a long-term plan is just to be steady and sure with what you're doing. And over time, I believe that you'll be rewarded for that. That's something my wife and I have certainly found by doing this for quite a number of decades right now. We are not disappointed at all that we we had, uh, big sell offs during those last few decades, nor did we get too carried away when the market went up. It's tempting. I realize to count how much money you've made each day when the market goes up and to grieve over what you've lost when the market goes down. But if you had the same amount of ounces at the end of the day as you did in the beginning and you weren't planning on selling, it just doesn't matter from that perspective. There is going to be some more hype around the May contract, you can be sure of that. There's going to be all sorts of hype around manipulations. There's going to be hype around wars and rumors of wars. There's going to be hype about central, um, uh, digital currency, and it's a real concern. I am not diminishing any of these things. I'm just saying that there'll always be something, just formulate a plan and then stay with the plan until it doesn't make sense for you and your situation to continue with it. Well, that's the video for today. Let me know what you think about it in the comments if you would be so kind as to do so. I always enjoy your comments and I learn a lot from them. So, thank you for that. Thank you for watching the video today and for all of you who have subscribed. I genuinely appreciate that as well. But again, thanks for watching. I hope we all see you again next time. God bless.
