I’m going to do something a little different this week. Instead of the usual quick commentary before the charts, I want to walk you through the numbers behind what’s happening right now, because the numbers are more powerful than any opinion I could offer.

The United States spent $5.6 billion in munitions in the first two days of strikes against Iran. That’s $2.8 billion a day. Not on roads. Not in hospitals. Not on anything that will exist next week. On explosions. Congressional committees received that report last Monday, and I’d encourage you to sit with that figure for a moment before we continue.

A Tomahawk cruise missile costs roughly $2 million and contains somewhere between 3 and 500 ounces of silver, (depending on source, it’s classified so no one knows), — in the guidance systems, the electronics, the solder joints. When it hits its target, that silver is gone, not recycled. Not recovered. Vaporised. The Pentagon has now ordered missile manufacturers to quadruple production. Quadruple. That’s not a typo. Lockheed Martin and RTX are scaling up as we speak, and every missile they build consumes copper, silver, gold, and rare earths that the rest of the economy also desperately needs.

Meanwhile, Israel’s Finance Ministry estimates the war is costing their economy $3 billion per week, 9.4 billion shekels. For a $530 billion economy, that’s a 30% annualised drag if sustained. Hundreds of thousands of reservists pulled from the tech sector, from agriculture, from construction. Every one of them is a productive worker turned into a cost centre. This is not an opinion. It’s arithmetic.

THE THREE-WAY COLLISION

Here’s what nobody in the mainstream financial press is connecting. Three massive sources of demand are competing for the same finite pool of metals — simultaneously:

1. THE AI DATA CENTRE BUILDOUT

One Microsoft data centre requires 4.8 million pounds of copper, 4,889 pounds of gold, and 14,197 pounds of silver. And that’s a small one. There are 16 gigawatts of new data centre capacity planned for 2026 globally — nearly triple last year’s levels. Each megawatt of AI-specific capacity requires 47 metric tons of copper, nearly double what traditional data centres need. Wall Street is now calling copper “Red Gold,” and it hit an all-time record of $14,527 per metric ton in January.

The $3 trillion data centre investment supercycle that JLL projects through 2030 isn’t just competing with your local housing developer for copper wire. It’s competing with the Pentagon.

2. THE MILITARY MACHINE

$5.6 billion in munitions in 48 hours. $25 billion allocated in the 2025 reconciliation bill for munitions production. Missile makers ordered to quadruple output. All of this on top of the roughly $175 billion already spent supporting Ukraine since 2022. The U.S. is now financing three simultaneous areas of conflict on borrowed money, at record interest rates.

And here’s the GDP illusion nobody wants to talk about: when the government spends $2 million turning a Tomahawk into a hole in the ground, GDP goes up. Economists call that “growth.” I call it the most expensive way to destroy wealth ever invented. GDP measures activity, not progress. War is activity without progress. Strip out government defence spending from the U.S. GDP figures, and the picture looks very different from the one they’re selling you on CNBC.

3. THE GREEN ENERGY TRANSITION

Solar panels, electric vehicles, grid modernisation — all competing for the same silver, copper, and rare earths. Solar alone now accounts for a significant portion of silver’s industrial demand, which has pushed the silver market into its sixth consecutive year of structural deficit. Six years. The Silver Institute projects industrial demand of approximately 650 million ounces this year, with deficits averaging 170 million ounces annually. There is no mine supply response coming that can close this gap.

THE SUPPLY SIDE IS BROKEN

Let me give you the numbers:

• SILVER: 6th consecutive year of structural deficit. Industrial uses now account for over half of global demand. Silver went from $28.92 to $72 in 2025 alone, a 147% move and the deficit is still widening.

• COPPER: The International Copper Study Group projects a global deficit of 150,000 to 330,000 metric tons for 2026. Commercial inventories sit below three weeks of global consumption. Bank of America compared the copper crunch to the 1970s oil crisis. Lead times for grid-scale electrical transformers now exceed 40 months. You can build the data centre, but you can’t connect it to the grid.

• GOLD: Central banks continue accumulating at record pace while mine production remains flat. Data centres alone are consuming thousands of pounds of gold per facility for connectors and electronic components.

WHAT IT MEANS

When a government starts talking about a military draft — and yes, that conversation is now happening in Washington — it’s telling you two things: the war is bigger than they expected, and they’re willing to sacrifice the productive economy to fight it. Every draftee is one less taxpayer, one less producer, one more government expense. The people they’d draft — 18 to 35 year olds — are the most productive demographic in the country.

Oil has gone from $60 at the start of the year to over $100. Gasoline jumped 27 cents in a single week. If oil holds at $125, analysts project U.S. GDP drops 0.8% while consumer inflation hits 4%. The Fed can’t cut rates into that. The “affordability” narrative is dead. Stagflation, rising prices with slowing growth is no longer a risk. It’s arriving and we have been talking about it for months.

Families watching their kids potentially get called up don’t spend money on houses and cars. They hunker down, save, and move into hard assets. Fear is deflationary for consumer spending and inflationary for safe havens.

This is why you own physical metal. Not paper promises. Not ETFs that may or may not have what they claim in the vault. Physical metal, stored in a jurisdiction that isn’t at war, isn’t printing money to finance one, and isn’t about to draft your children to fight in one.

In my opinion, the repricing event I wrote about two weeks ago isn’t coming. It’s here. The numbers above are the evidence. Please read them carefully. And please forward this to anyone you think should see them.

This newsletter is for informational purposes only and does not constitute financial advice.

PLATINUM

SELL: On the Daily chart (03 March 2026) Rate of change still falling.

URANIUM

SELL (03 March 2026) URA.

BITCOIN AND GOLD

Bitcoin outperforms Gold  (125 February 2026).  13.64 one ounce gold coins buys one bitcoin, this was over 41 ounces almost a year ago.

ETHUSD: BUY: (18 February 2026) Very early buy signal. Worth a try. Looks like it is working.

BTCUSD: BUY: 03 March 2026.  NASDAQ (Cyan). Note the divergence from the NASDAQ.

GOLD AND SILVER STOCKS

05 March 2026 Gold outperforms gold stocks.

Silver outperforms silver stocks (05 March 2026).

GOLD AND SILVER

Here is an indication of the volatility of silver compared to gold.I believe we have not seen anything yet.

Silver to Gold Ratio

Gold outperforming Silver. (03 March 2026)  Silver is coming out of the ground at about 8:1 and the Gold: Silver ratio is 61.62.

GOLD TO USD

USD outperforms Gold, (30 January 2026).

A LOOK AT THE GOLD AND SILVER CHARTS

Gold’s low of the week was $5,060.00, and the high was $5,238.00, now trading at around $5,170.00.

• Gold Monthly:  is a HOLD. We bought it for $1,800.00 in October 2023.  Looking overbought, but it can hold that situation for a while. No sell signal yet. Indicators are turning down.

• Gold Weekly:  (HOLD 25 August 2025)   Overbought. No sell signals yet. Signals weakening.

• Gold Daily: (HOLD: 12 November 2025).  The indicators are holding. Gold daily is in a precarious situation with most of the indicators about to show a sell.

The low for Silver this week was $82.81 and the high $90.00, trading around $86.67 at present. 

• Silver Monthly: Hold. (Buy:  $24.00 March 2024). Looking overbought. No sell signal yet. Indicators are turning down.

• Silver Weekly: (SELL: 09 February 2026). If I were holding physical, I would not be releasing it at these prices. As a trade, I would follow the signal. No new buy on the indicators yet.

• Silver Daily: SELL (04 March 2026).  Very close to a buy. Worth waiting for a distinctive buy.

Our partner has a stock of both gold, silver, and Goldbacks in our vaults available in Panama. Please contact us for more information.

A video by Mike Adams on the Goldbacks. 

Well worth a look!

On the Stockcharts.com charts, the blue vertical lines are our proprietary system buy signals and the red vertical lines are system sell signals – for information purposes only

An interview with Josh, owner of Scottsdale Mint:watch here

Please contact us to arrange the purchase and storage of your gold and silver requirements in a safe, insured location outside of your jurisdiction.

If you are interested in an overview of Fort Kobbe, you may want to have a look at this video: Mike Brown, Director, Fort Kobbe, International Vaults, A DotCom Magazine Exclusive Interview

This is my interpretation of the market and is not to be taken as financial advice. Before making any buy or sell decisions I recommend that you consult with your professional financial advisor.