After the fun and games on the market last week,I have put together my thoughts on the position with gold and silver as well as on parts of the geopolitical situation.

If you’re looking at capital preservation, short-term price manipulation does not affect physical precious metals holdings. Your ounce weighs the same today as it did two weeks ago. Purchasing power counts, irrespective of the ‘nominal’ value and currency.

I am following the technical situation and believe in it fully; unfortunately, the large market makers know how to ‘paint the tape’ to push the small guys around. In this case, I have to look at the fundamentals.

Here I get a different picture. I see banks buying whatever they can of gold, and I see silver shortages. As good and comfortable as I am at trading the markets on the signals, I will not let an ounce of physical gold or silver out of my possession.

OPENING + SELL CASCADE

Six things hit gold simultaneously:

1. Military strike which was the catalyst.
2. Algorithmic response, automated sell programs which sell under specific conditions.
3. ETF liquidation cascade, there were record outflows from GOLD and SILVER as well as 2x/3x amplification on the shorts.
4. Institutions sell, retail buys in a classic distribution pattern.
5. Gulf liquidation, there was a $307B flight of deposits from the banks, so the gulf states were selling gold to finance the withdrawals.
6. Dollar peg defence, Gulf states were forced to sell gold reserves to maintain the peg because Hormuz cut oil revenue. If they were unable to maintain the peg or allow repatriation of funds, their long-term credibility would have been demolished.

The UAE bought $16.5 billion in American weapons, bypassing Congress. The same week, gold had its worst drop in 43 years. The weapons require dollars. Dollars require selling gold. It’s not a conspiracy. It’s a receipt.

CIRCUIT BREAKERS

Gold spiked to $5,300.00, the exchanges hiked margins within hours, and when nickel doubled in 2022, the LME halted trading and cancelled completed trades. Then, copper hit a high on March 16th, and the LME halted all electronic trading.

Gold dropped 15% in a week, the worst decline in 43 years, and the circuit breakers didn’t fire. Silver dropped 17%. Nothing.

The decline was managed. Not one 15% crash, but a series of 3% daily drops that each stayed just below the single-session threshold. That kind of pacing doesn’t happen organically.

When prices go up too fast, exchanges intervene; when prices go down too fast, the market is ‘functioning normally.’ Ask yourself who the circuit breakers are designed to protect. It’s not you.

PHYSICAL vs PAPER

The United States Mint will sell you a Silver Eagle for $169.00 That’s a 141% premium. In Singapore, people stood in line to buy physical at $70. In Shanghai, silver trades at triple digits. China paid $8 premiums to import 490 tonnes in February.

In New York, algorithms dumped silver ETFs. In Singapore, people stood in line to buy it. One of these groups will be right. My money, literally, is on the people in the queue.

CHINA’S ONE WAY VALVE

China imported 790 tonnes of silver in the first two months of this year. In February alone, while the COMEX price was crashing and Western funds were dumping paper silver as fast as they could, China took 490 tonnes off the market and paid $8 per ounce above spot to get it. They didn’t haggle and didn’t wait for a better price. They bought everything they could.

This is a country that used to export silver, refining it and selling it to the world. That flow has reversed. China now keeps what it refines and imports on top of it. Silver enters China, and it does not come back out. Not some of it. None of it.

Meanwhile, Western ETFs shed 1,900 tonnes. That silver didn’t vanish into thin air. It changed hands. It moved from West to East, from paper accounts to physical vaults, from traders who wanted cash to a country that wants metal. At the current import rate, China will absorb the entire Western ETF liquidation by summer. After that, there is no silver left to sell unless COMEX opens its vaults and starts delivering, which means acknowledging that 86 million registered ounces is all that stands between an orderly market and a delivery default.

China ran this exact play with rare earths a decade ago. Control the supply quietly, let the West argue about prices, then one day set the terms. Silver is next.

SILVER VAULTS DRAINING

The combined silver inventory at COMEX and the LBMA is down 60% from its peak, roughly 135 million ounces between them. COMEX registered inventory, the metal actually earmarked for delivery against futures contracts, sits at a multi-year low of about 86 million ounces. To put that in context, the March 2026 delivery month alone had 52.6 million ounces standing for delivery, more than half the entire registered stock in a single month.

Delivery demands have been accelerating for two years. In 2024, 203 million ounces stood for delivery. In 2025, that number more than doubled to 474 million. January 2026 alone saw 49.4 million ounces, seven times what January 2024 generated. The drawdown is accelerating at the exact moment that mine supply is flat, no major new mines are expected for at least a decade, and an increasing share of what comes out of the ground gets consumed permanently. Solar panels don’t give the silver back. Neither do Tomahawk missiles, each one vaporises somewhere around 500 ounces, and the Pentagon just ordered production to quadruple.

There is a real possibility, one I think you should consider carefully, that governments invoke the Defence Production Act to commandeer mine output for military use. It has happened before: FDR confiscated private gold in 1933 at $20.67 and revalued it to $35, a 69% wealth transfer overnight. The DPA has already been invoked for mining under the current administration. If silver reaches $150 and the military is competing with solar manufacturers for supply, a priority allocation order is one executive signature away.

If that happens, the silver already sitting in a private vault, outside the mining jurisdiction, outside the reach of a commandeering order, becomes the last free-market silver on earth. Governments don’t confiscate things that are worthless. They confiscate things they desperately need. The question is not whether to hold it. The question is where.

THE 1.1 TRILLION MACHINE

The United States now pays roughly $1.1 trillion per year in interest on its national debt. That figure has overtaken defence spending to become the single largest line item in the federal budget. It is worth understanding exactly where that money goes, because it does not go where most people assume.

The Federal Reserve holds approximately $5 trillion in Treasuries, and the interest the government pays on those holdings is supposed to be remitted back to the Treasury, except when the Fed itself is losing money from the rate hikes it imposed, in which case it keeps the payments to cover its own losses. So the government borrows money, pays interest to the institution that sets the interest rate, and that institution uses the interest to patch the hole created by its own policy. It is circular in the most literal sense.

Foreign governments hold $8.1 trillion. Japan holds $1.1 trillion. China holds $770 billion, and that value is declining because China has been using the interest income it earns on American debt to buy physical gold and silver. Think about that for a moment. The United States is funding China’s precious metals accumulation with its own debt payments.

Hundreds of billions more flow to entities registered in Luxembourg, the Cayman Islands, and Ireland, shell structures that serve as pass-throughs for hedge funds and multinational corporations paying minimal tax. Wall Street banks, JPMorgan, Goldman Sachs, Citigroup, act as primary dealers at Treasury auctions, buy the debt, and earn risk-free interest from it. They are the market maker and the beneficiary simultaneously.

Not one dollar of this $1.1 trillion builds a road, funds a school, or feeds a family. It is a wealth transfer from taxpayers to creditors, running on autopilot, compounding annually. The interest itself is borrowed, which creates more debt, which creates more interest. This debt will never be repaid. It will be inflated away. That is not a prediction. It is arithmetic. And that arithmetic is why you hold gold.

Dr. COPPER’S WARNING

Everyone watches copper’s price. They should be watching the warehouse.

Global visible copper stocks across the LME, Shanghai, and COMEX have surged past 1.39 million tonnes — the highest level in twenty years. At the same time, prices have fallen from $14,527 per metric ton in January to below $12,500. China, the world’s largest copper consumer, is refusing to buy at $13,000. The physical market is, in one analyst’s words, paralysed.

The mainstream explanation is that this is temporary — AI data centres and the green energy transition will absorb the surplus. In the long run, they may be right. But inventory does not lie. When warehouse stocks hit two-decade highs while the world’s biggest buyer walks away, the real economy is telling you something the stock market is not. Copper has called every recession since the 1970s, not through price, but through inventory. Rising stockpiles at elevated prices mean demand is weakening underneath, while structural costs keep prices high. That is the textbook definition of stagflation.

The economies of the world are stretched to a point where, regardless of how this war ends, a significant contraction is coming. The US is approaching 40% government share of GDP. Europe is in a rolling energy crisis. China’s property sector is still unwinding three years after Evergrande. Japan is trapped at 260% debt-to-GDP. In previous downturns, at least one major economy was strong enough to pull the others out. This time, there is no engine.

For silver, a recession means industrial demand softens, but it cannot collapse. Solar demand is mandated and growing. Military demand is accelerating. China’s strategic hoarding does not stop for economic cycles. The structural supply deficit, now in its sixth consecutive year, is too deep to close with reduced demand alone. Silver climbs more slowly in a recession. It does not fall.

Gold has no industrial dependency at all. It is THE pure monetary metal. It does not need an economy to function, a government to guarantee it, or a server to stay online. When everything else breaks, gold works. That is not philosophy. It is five thousand years of evidence.

CLOSE

Seventy-seven percent of the world’s central banks plan to keep buying gold. Even during gold’s worst week in 43 years, three-quarters of these monetary authorities didn’t blink. They aren’t “momentum traders” watching CNBC; they are replacing dollar reserves with gold. They’ve done the math—the same math we share here—and they’ve reached the same conclusion.

The sellers last week were temporary and forced. Algorithms executing pre-programmed trades. Leveraged funds meeting margin calls. Gulf states defending currency pegs with their oil revenue cut off. Every one of them will stop selling eventually  because they will run out of gold to sell.

The buyers are structural and permanent. Central banks. China. India. The person standing in a queue in Singapore. They will not stop buying, because the reasons to buy are not going away. The debt is not shrinking. The printing is not stopping. The war is not ending. The only thing that changed last week was the paper price, and paper has been lying about the value of gold for as long as paper has existed.

Watch the Fed, the dollar, and the 10-year yield. For wealth preservation, hold your physical gold and silver in a safe place.

Five thousand years of track record versus one bad week. Easy bet.

PLATINUM

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

URANIUM

SELL (03 March 2026) URA. A definite buy in the next week or two.

BITCOIN AND GOLD

Bitcoin outperforms Gold  (12 February 2026).  15.77 one ounce gold coins buys one bitcoin, this was over 41 ounces almost a year ago.

ETHUSD: BUY: (18 February 2026) 

BTCUSD: BUY: 03 March 2026.  NASDAQ (Cyan). Note the divergence from the NASDAQ. Two reasons I have not put a sell on Bitcoin. 1. Divergence from the Nasdaq and 2. The RSI is just above 50. I will be watching it carefully.

GOLD AND SILVER STOCKS

05 March 2026 Gold outperforms gold stocks. Indicators almost showing a reversal.

Silver outperforms silver stocks (05 March 2026). Was overbought, no transfer yet. Similar set up to gold.

GOLD AND SILVER

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 62.82:1.

GOLD TO USD

USD outperforms Gold, (30 January 2026).

Copper

COPX: SELL (02 March 2026) The usage of copper at present is falling off, although the potential future, should the economies of the world grow, is enormous. It is expected to replace ailing infrastructure, build new data centers, and substitute for silver …. Copper stocks are building at an alarming rate. The price spiked over $14000.00 per ton, but China refused to pay more than $13000.00. It is trading at $12135.00 today. Stagnation, recession, or depression would be catastrophic for copper.

GOLD AND SILVER CHART

Gold’s low of the week was $4097.00 and the high was $4,602.00 now trading at around $4,437.00.

• Gold Monthly:  is a SELL. (25 March 2026) From $1800.00 to $4513.00. As a trade, an excellent result. We can buy back when the signal changes. If I were holding physical, because of the fundamentals, I would not let go of it.

• Gold Weekly:  (SELL 19 March 2026)   Candlestick signs of a turnaround, no conventional signals yet.

• Gold Daily: (SELL 17 March 2026).  There is a spike low, which is quite convincing for a buy signal. I am waiting for confirmation.

The low for Silver this week was $60.80 and the high $74.53 trading around $68.27 at present. 

• Silver Monthly: Hold. (Buy:  $24.00 March 2024). Looking overbought. No sell signal yet. Indicators are turning down. Watching carefully. Almost a sell, not yet.

• 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).  Spike low promises a reversal; indicators are still catching up.

Our partner has 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:

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.