Contents

1. Silver Market Summary
2. Drivers and Catalysts
   1. Tariff Risk
   2. Mineral Wars
   3. London Has No Metal
   4. India Wants Silver- Brics ETF Demand
3. Key Analysis breakdowns: BOA, GS, UBS
4. Technicals

1. Silver Market Summary

Authored by GoldFix, ZH Edit 

Silver prices soared last week, touching levels not seen since 2011, as signs of physical market tightness and speculative flows collided with macro crosscurrents.

Spot silver rallied as much as 4% to $38.47/oz, while COMEX September futures peaked at $39.12/oz, creating an unusually wide arbitrage spread. The dislocation echoed the premium spike seen earlier this year when U.S. tariff threats distorted pricing between domestic and global markets. Lease rates firmed as traders scrambled for deliverable supply.

Market participants also pointed to growing concerns over Chinese scrap flows, with efforts underway to restrict outbound shipments that might tighten refining supply further.

2. Drivers and Catalysts

There are many drivers bringing us to this point. Few are new but many have gotten more obvious recently. The recent headline events ( tariffs, LBMA shortfalls, etc) that catalyzed market players to focus on these drivers have brought new (and unwanted as far as short players go) attention to the metal driving prices much higher, with still more to go. Lets run through some of the main ones.

Tariff Risk

Tariffs , especially those on base metals, have exerted a sharp impact on silver prices by disrupting the delicate balance between industrial demand and market supply. As noted in a GoldFix analysis of COMEX silver and gold, “case studies: Chinese‑origin and Russian‑origin metals” show how tariffs can elevate costs and reroute global flows

When tariffs are imposed on key industrial metals like copper or aluminum, they often ripple into silver. Silver serves both as a monetary asset and an industrial input: higher tariffs can drive up the cost of metal-intensive manufacturing, reducing consumption. On the supply side, tariff barriers curb cross-border metal shipments—especially from large producers like China or Russia—creating sourcing tightness. That tightness can tighten the physical silver market, pushing spot premiums higher and even encouraging speculative positioning on COMEX futures.

In short: tariffs raise industrial production costs, choke off metal flows, and bring physical-market strain—each element feeding upward pressure on silver’s price.

Mineral Wars 

The resulting mineral wars are less about bullets ( so far) and more about permits, tariffs, and bilateral agreements. Import-reliant economies face rising costs and decreasing leverage. In this new framework, metals like copper, lithium, and silver are no longer just industrial inputs. They are geopolitical assets.

Daniel Ghali frames these market dislocations as interlocking signs of physical scarcity.

“We’re seeing some of the most extreme readings in lease rates and EFPs since the pandemic,” he noted in commentary published this quarter. “The message is simple—silver is increasingly hard to source.”

These stress signals are not abstract, quite the opposite. Reality is running over abstractions now. Historically, lease rate spikes above 2 percent have preceded price rallies of 20 to 50 percent within 6 to 12 months. When coupled with shrinking inventories and delivery pressure, the case becomes stronger: the silver market is entering a phase where scarcity, rather than sentiment, could become the dominant price driver.

3. Key Bank Analysis

Find attached GoldFix breakdowns of the most important Bank reports covering Silver since March.   ht ZH

Continues here