- Metals see the short paper trades gain…
- The rate cut is coming…
Good Day… And a Tub Thumpin’ Thursday to one and all! One week removed from Thanksgiving, and I still feel full! I know, you’re saying, “yeah, we know what you’re full of!” OK, don’t be so harsh! Brr, it’s cold outside, and we won’t get out of the teens today regarding the temperature. I used to park my car and walk across a open air bridge to our bank building… I would cuss every step of the way, as the wind would blow right through that suspension bridge! It’s a good thing my mom wasn’t around to hear me talk like that! Mindi Abair greets me this morning singing her version of the song: I Can’t Wait For Christmas… She does the song really bluesy, and I like that…
Well, the dollar started the day down 4 index points in the BBDXY at 1,213, but then the selling stalled out and that’s exactly where the DDDXY stood at the end of the day 1,213… So, what was up with that? Well, not knowing for sure, but I would say that the PPT came to the dollar’s rescue, and intervened buying dollars to offset the selling. No biggie, they didn’t cause an increase in the dollar, so we move along for these are not the droids we’re looking for…
Gold ended the day flat to up $1 at 4,207… And Silver only gained 11-cents on the day, so it appears that the SPTs were selling the metals but not at takedown levels, just maintenance levels… The price of Oil remained trading with a $59 handle, actually right at $59.00… And the 10-year Treasury stayed trading with a 4.06% yield all day… So, there was little to no activity in the bond…
In the overnight markets last night… The dollar didn’t garner any attention overnight, and so the BBDXY starts the day at 1,213. Not a lot on the dollar’s economic plate today, so it gets a reprieve from getting sold for weak data… But it’s adding up all these little losses, so keep your diversification into the currencies, you’ll be glad you did sooner or later… Gold & Silver are getting whacked again this morning… Gold is down $13, and Silver is down $1.09… That, Kitco.com says is “modest price pressure in Gold, Silver on routine corrective pullbacks”… I say hogwash!
Sure, there could be some of that hogwash going on, but the SPTs are out and about and making the sledding for Gold & Silver a tough row to hoe this morning… It all began yesterday… Gold was above $4,200 and Silver had touched $59, and then the trap door was sprung on the tow metals, and the SPTs showed up at the Comex with their arms full of short paper trades… I guess they didn’t like that I said I thought they were losing the battle yesterday….
And since when is “modest price Pressure” equal to over a $1 loss? C’mon you’re better than that Kitco!
Maybe when Silver is trading near $100, we’ll look back at this and say a $1 loss was modest, but not at $59..
The price of Oil remained trading with a $59 handle overnight… I still think that the price of Oil lower than I thought it would be right now, with the attack by Ukraine drones of a Russian Oil sector the other day… There is a supply gut at the moment in Oil so there is that, but, it won’t last long, it never does, so why aren’t they looking ahead? I suspect that the U.S. Gov’t has something to say about that… I’m just saying…
And the U.S. Treasury 10-year’s yield bounced higher again overnight to 4.09%… You know, when the Fed Heads aren’t in “managing the yield to keep it from going higher” then the yield goes where it wants to go, and that is, higher!
Yesterday I talked about following the money… And then I read this on Kitco.com: “Central banks saw their strongest month of the year for gold purchases in October, with leading buyers returning and new states expressing an interest in ramping up holdings, according to Krishan Gopaul, Senior Analyst, EMEA at the World Gold Council… “
Chuck again… Yes, The Central Banks are still buying Gold for their reserves instead of dollars, and now new Central Banks that haven’t participated previously, are jumping on the wagon… The thing I thought of when I saw the time in their buys is that they did this all during the month of Rocktober, when Gold & Silver were getting the snot knocked out of them by the SPTs… So, now my head is spinning with an idea, let me throw that against the wall and see if this sticks… The Central Banks gave the SPTs the wink and nod to go ahead and take down the metals so they could buy them cheaper… Hey! Don’t laugh! It could quite have possibly worked that way!
Hey, listen, I’m really knocked for a loop this morning. The steroids I’m taking (my last day) really mess with my being able to fall asleep at night, and so it was last night, I was up until 3.30 a.m. I heard the alarm on my phone go off at the usual time, and I just turned it off… But I got up eventually, and drug the line over to my writing desk… So, the letter is a little later than usual and it will be shorter, because I hear the sandman calling my name right now… UGH!
The data, I’ll go through in just a minute is not what a strong economy shows… And the loss of jobs in this country is building momentum… And so, there will be a 25 Basis Point rate cut next week… That’s already being priced in so, I don’t expect there to be much damage when the actual rate cut is announced on 12/10.
Even with the over $1 pullback by Silver this morning, Silver has actually doubled its price this year! My friend, Rich Checkan of Asset Strategies told his clients the other day that Silver had doubled its price in 2025… And I sat there and thought… Yes, and without interference from the SPTs Silver would have probably tripled in price this year… That would put Silver around $86… Yeah, that sounds about right in my mind… I’m just saying
The U.S. Data Cupboard had the ADP Employment Report for us yesterday and in November U.S. Corporations and Businesses axed a net 32,000 jobs… So, this will have to work for the markets because the BLS is not going to issue a labor report for Rocktober. So, the labor market is weak, very weak I’d say… But I would bet a bottom dollar that IF the BLS did issue a report, they would show a positive gain for jobs!
Tomorrow’s Data Cupboard will have Personal Income & Spending for Sept… Wait! What? Sept? Yes, that’s how far behind they are… So, it won’t make a hill of difference what happened 3 months ago to the markets… We’ll also see the NOV PCE which is an important inflation calculation… Personal Consumption Expenditures…
To recap… The dollar selling that was going on in the overnight markets Tuesday night, stopped when the U.S. took over yesterday morning… PPT intervening? Probably, so we’ll just move on… Gold was flat to up a buck yesterday, and Silver gained a whopping 11-cents… The SPTs were out and about yesterday again… Seems like an every day occurrence these days… They may not always take the metals down, but what they do is keep the metals from taking off for higher ground…
For What It’s Worth… Ok, this is a very long article, so I suggest you click on the link and read the entire thing, because I won’t be able to include ½ of it in the Pfennig this morning. This is article about how physical Silver is KING… And not to be short Silver now and it can be found here: ‘Physical is king’: India’s silver demand collides with 25-year supply gap, Baker warns | Kitco News
Or, here’s your snippet: “Silver’s record-breaking run is being driven less by hedge funds and more by a wave of physical demand that the mining industry cannot quickly meet, a longtime U.S. silver mining executive said in an interview with Kitco News.
“The physical market is driving the financial market in a way that it hasn’t done in my career,” Phil Baker said, describing what he heard at the London Bullion Market Association’s recent annual meeting. “It was interesting. I was at the LBMA annual meeting and the quote of the meeting was ‘physical is king.’”
We’re in a very different place than we’ve been in the last 20 years.”
Baker, the former chief executive of Hecla Mining and now an adviser in the sector, said the stress he observed among bullion professionals was unlike anything he had seen before. “I was really struck at the LBMA at the stress that was felt by the market participants with silver, and it was… stress that I had not seen before,” he said. “It’s really clear to me that these guys are not going to allow their inventory levels to fall to the same levels they were before.”
India as “the driver”
While investors have focused on Western futures markets, Baker argued that India now sits at the center of the silver story.
“For me, the thing that really drives silver is what’s happening in India,” he said. “That is the driver. That literally is the driver.”
He noted that India, now the world’s fifth-largest economy, has seen silver imports soar. In October, India imported around 60 million ounces of silver, compared with about 15 million ounces a year earlier, he said. “Despite the fact that silver is at all-time highs in rupee terms, the demand has been, as I described at the Perth Mint, insatiable,” Baker said.
According to Indian trade and government data, India’s silver imports did surge in 2023–24 after a sharp drawdown in prior years, making it one of the world’s largest silver consumers alongside China.
Baker said the destination of the flow of metal out of London has been unmistakable. “If you look at where the silver went from London, it went to Mumbai,” he said.”
Chuck again… Remember when I told you that India had taken to buying Silver and not just Gold any longer? Well, this plays nicely in the sandbox with the FWIW article today…
Market Prices 12/4/2025: American Style: A$ .6606, kiwi .5763, C$ .7156, euro 1.1665, sterling 1.3335, Swiss $1.2489, European Style: rand 16.9363, krone 10.0974, SEK 9.4019, florint 327.45, zloty 3.6279, koruna 20.7155, RUB 77.02, yen 154.82, sing 1.2957, HKD 7.7835, INR 89.97, China 7.0716, peso 18.26, BRL 5.2951, BBDXY 1,213, Dollar Index 98.89, Oil $59.58, 10-year 4.09%, Silver $57.43, Platinum $1,644.00, Palladium $1,475.00, Copper $5.34, and Gold… $4,194
That’s it for today and this week… We have our subdivision’s annual Christmas Party, (progessive dinner) with each serving at a different person’s house… We have hosted this party for the last stop several times through the years, and when we were younger, it could be a very late night, but not any longer… By 10 o’clock the neighbors are rolling up the carpet! My beloved Mizzou Tigers basketball team plays Kansas this Sunday… The old Border War… They played at Mizzou last December with Mizzou upsetting the highly ranked Jayhawks, I am hoping for much of the same on Sunday! And also on Sunday will be Alex and Grace’s 1st year anniversary… Congrats you made it 1 year! That was the most difficult one for us… And in June next year, we will celebrate 50 years! I can’t believe we’re that old, but we are… Vince Guaraldi Trio is taking us to the finish line today with his version of: What Child Is This? I hope you have a Tub Thumpin’ Thursday today, and Please Be Good To Yourself! And Be Good to your neighbor!
Chuck Butler