Hail Immortal America (and Happy 2026)
COMEX raised margin requirements on silver twice this week. This is supposed to make trading less volatile and squeeze out speculators. But the silver market is in backwardation–so it's not working.
Wednesday, December 31st, 2025
Laramie, Wyoming
By Dan Denning
Happy New Year’s Eve from the high plains of Laramie. We’ll resume our normal publishing schedule at BPR–assuming the world still turns and the sun rises in the East–on Friday. Until then, a few quick research notes for you to review before the fireworks, champagne, resolutions, and midnight kisses…
The first installment of our Research Reports on digital privacy has been uploaded. You can find it here. There are lots of aspects to this story–from communications and banking to crypto and security. We’re going to tackle them piece by piece in the coming months. Please feel free to leave comments, suggestions, or questions below the report.
UBS thinks gold is going to $5,000/oz in 2026 and gold is Goldman Sach’s ‘single favorite long commodity’ for next year, according to the firm’s outlook for next year. There’s a lot in there about power and energy as well.
Are NLRP3s the next GLP1s? I went down the rabbit hole today on the next generation of AI-designed drugs that could be huge ‘black swan’ wealth makers next year (or in a few years). Long story short: it’s not about medicating a fat society because of too many calories and too much free time. It’s about treating aging at the cellular level, a science called ‘senolytics’ which studies how to eliminate ‘zombie’ cells in the body which have stopped dividing but refuse to die. Huge topic. Totally new to me. But much more to research. Here’s a good place to start.
There’s a ton going on silver. China’s export controls kick in on New Year’s Day. But the Shanghai Gold Exchange is closed until early next week. It will be hard to see whether silver continues to trade at a premium in the East against the paper markets in the West.
COMEX raised margin requirements on silver twice this week. This is supposed to make trading less volatile and squeeze out speculators. But the fact that the silver market is in backwardation–where spot prices are higher than futures prices–suggests that it isn’t working. More to the point: physical > paper.
Most trades in the paper markets are just bets on price. They settle in cash. The paper claims on metal are massively higher than the amount of metal that’s available for delivery. But industrial users (and those who understand that central banks intend to print money in 2026 on top of huge fiscal deficits) don’t want cash. They want silver.
This continues to be a problem for big banks who may be short silver in the paper markets. The squeeze is real. And if they can’t deliver the silver they owe, it may put the exchanges (LBMA and COMEX) in the awkward position of declaring force majeure. What happens then?
