Today’s literal price of gold today is still often determined by the front-month COMEX gold futures contract. The signal that the current polite gold price discovery system is beginning to fall apart as more and more physical gold bullion buyers around the world demand direct delivery will be an exponential move in the spot price of gold and difficulty in finding physical gold bullion in deliverable size priced anywhere reasonable near the then spot gold price.
The nation of India bought more gold bullion tonnes this week and has increased its physical gold reserves by +27% in the last 2 years. Egypt added 44 metric tonnes of gold bullion recently. Turkey has also been a big official gold bullion buyer thus far in 2022. This week’s holiday-shortened trading week for silver and gold spot prices was positive in price action. The silver spot price appears to be close to $25.50 oz. The gold spot price will likely finish this week above $1970 oz. The gold-silver ratio tightened towards 77 for this holiday-shortened trading week. This week another increase was admitted by the US government’s Bureau of Labor and Statistics. Claiming that US price inflation has risen over 8.5% over the past year while ignoring the fact that 1/3rd of their inflation index is enormously understating rising US rents up 17% y/y and US home prices up 19% over the past year. Actual price inflation using pre-1980 measurement methods are easily in the mid-teens now. Basic food staples are certainly using price increases in teens over the last 12 months.
Negative real interest rates have never been this profoundly negative throughout this entire full fiat currency era, signaling things are very sick with this fiat financial system. Given massive price inflation growing globally, the bond market thus far in 2022 has had one of its worst performances to kick off a year on record.
1 Oz Gold Bar
The ongoing drain of underlying COMEX #Silver bullion holdings continues with the silver spot price in a nearly two-year sideways price consolidation. As the spot gold price appears poised to make a run at $2,000 oz and eventual new record price highs to come, the silver spot price has a long way to go before considering it relatively expensive. If you are looking for an inexpensive store of value, silver remains perhaps the best long-term bet. As the prices of virtually all commodities and things we need for our modern way of life have increased over the past year, the spot silver market has consolidated sideways, priced at a relative discount still today. We again have another base metal traded on the London Metals Exchange, threatening to be short squeezed as inventory levels are running out. It appears zinc is now readying to do an LME nickel price ramp. While about 70% of all new #Silver ore mined comes as a byproduct from Zinc, Copper, & Gold mining. All 3 of the aforementioned latter metals are now trading near record high price levels. Here is the over fifty-year price for zinc.
Over five decades of copper price. And the full fiat currency fiat Federal Reserve note price for gold as well. All at or near new nominal record price high levels. The relatively depressed silver spot price is still near -50% below its seemingly ancient $50 oz record price high. This is typical of secular bullion bull markets in gold and silver. Gold leads in the eventual mania phase, and only later does silver climb an exponential price wall and briefly outperform gold. It’s hard to imagine some point sooner than later; we will see a similar situation where $25 oz spot silver will be sorely missed by those who missed taking advantage of its relatively low price point today versus other recently ramping commodity prices points.
