In the London Metals Exchange, for example, we witnessed the price for Nickel blow beyond its all-time record price high level reached back in the year 2007. And thus, the LME implemented an emergency backwardation limit and delivery deferral mechanism, in other words, allowances for holders of some short positions to avoid delivery of price escalating base metals like Aluminum, Cobalt, Lead, Nickel, Tin, Zinc, and Copper.
Also reported today, futures broker Charles Schwab would not let customers buy various Wheat & Corn options. Closing orders only.
Predictable but important gold silver-related news out of the London Bullion Market Association is also out to start this week.
The leading western body on Good Delivery bullion bar accreditation has suspended six Russian precious metals refiners, meaning they will no longer be able to sell gold and silver into the London & COMEX markets moving forward.
Russia produces around 330 metric tonnes of #Gold #Bullion a year, worth about $21 billion at the current fiat US-denominated gold spot price.
That is around 9% of the total gold mined worldwide, according to London-based precious metals consultants Metals Focus.
Russia produces around 1,350 metric tonnes of silver bullion a year worth just over $1 billion, coming in at about 5% of the global annual new silver mine supply.
The six Russian refineries on the LBMA’s goLBMA'sivery list for gold and silver refiners are listed on this announcement. Only Moscow Special Alloys Processing Plant was the lone refiner not accredited for Good Delivery Silver. The rest were until now.
There are a few significant knock-on effects from this breaking physical-related silver and gold bullion news.
Firstly, Russian refiners will still find silver and gold bullion buyers domestically in Russia from private, sovereign wealth fund, and Russian government bullion buying, as well increasingly in places such as China, India, and the Middle East in places like Turkey & the UAE.
Importantly too, you may recall pointing out this SD Bullion channel back during the bullion bar market shortage during the first few months of 2020.
How the COMEX & LBMA colluded to begin allowing new Russian, Chinese, and Turkish 400 oz gold bullion bar and 1000 oz silver bullion bar hallmarks, respectively.
In the last two years, the amounts of Russian bullion bars that have flooded into unsecured underperforming precious metals ETFs like SLV, IAU, & GLD have risen substantially.
Reportedly just over 7% of the supposed silver bullion bars held by the iShares silver trust, nearly 40,000 silver 1000 oz bars are Russian refined likely the vast majority recently delivered to the trust. And while they and other Russian gold bars will likely remain within the respective trusts, there will be no more available supply coming from Russia for any of these trusts and their increasing demand for newly refined silver and gold bars.
Good thing SLV changed their investment prospectus and rules in Q1 2021, back when they acknowledged that demand can overwhelm supply and, in such a scenario, adversely affect an unsecured retail investor's investments in the shares.
Oh, what, you don't remember this classic #SilverSqueeze meme from just under one year ago?
iShares SLV Brrr-spectus Meme
https://twitter.com/jameshenryand/sta...
The bottom line on this breaking news is this.
The push for Russia to find more significant trading partners with their bullion is simply going to speed up the process of China and other eastern nations becoming closer trading partners and allies in the years unfolding.
At the same time, it will only exacerbate and further expose the western precious metals derivative and unsecured ETF markets for what they are. Unsecured price discovery markets are running out of time before our collective eyes in real-time.
I hope you have taken these last few years of spot price consolidations to acquire your prudent bullion positions. The years upcoming should be gratifying for those who have the foresight to have done so.
That is all for this brief SD Bullion breaking news market update.
As always, to you out there, take great care of yourselves and those you love.
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