Category Archives: Investment

Taylor Kenney of ITM Trading, in a recent interview, argues the dollar’s decline is a process, not an event, highlighting … Continue reading →

The silver market is forecast to record a fifth straight market deficit in 2025, with demand once again outstripping supply, and the majority of the existing above-ground silver stocks are not available to satisfy demand — at any price.

According to analysis by the Silver Institute, silver price movement doesn’t correlate with changes in above ground stocks.

“Once only a storehouse of wealth, for instance in bars, silverware, jewelry, and coins, items that stay mostly as they were produced – and largely unavailable to the market – silver has become an industrial metal that usually gets consumed or otherwise taken out of circulation except for recycling, whose effect can vary.”

This is bad news given the rapidly increasing demand for silver, especially for industrial use. 

Movements in bullion stocks do have an impact on the silver price and vice versa, but according to the Silver Institute, the vast majority of above ground silver stocks are “immobile.” There are only small net additions or subtractions from these stocks on an annual basis. 

Some other notes from the Silver Institute report:

Increases in bullion stocks are often positively correlated with the price, as investment demand grows when silver prices increase, which still stimulates higher prices.
Multi-year drawdowns in bullion stocks have tended to occur in bear markets for silver and have exacerbated these. However, these drawdowns have typically set silver up for more substantial rallies as investors have rebuilt their bullion holdings.
Above-ground stocks of fabricated products are less price-sensitive than those of bullion. Only specific subsets of silver fabrication demand show a sensitivity to the price, such as jewelry and silverware.

The bottom line is that growing silver demand will primarily need to be filled by mine output. But silver production has plateaued in recent years, and the trajectory moving forward is uncertain.

Silver mine output peaked in 2016 at 900 million ounces. Up until last year, silver production had dropped by an average of 1.4 percent each year. In 2023, mines produced 814 million ounces of silver.

Based on preliminary data, silver mine output increased by about 2 percent in 2024, breaking a trend of declining silver production, however, this isn’t nearly enough to meet demand. 

According to Metals Focus, a combination of reserve depletion, mine closures, and a 20 percent drop in ore grades drove sagging mine output.

This is why we’ve seen market deficits for several consecutive years. 

Silver supply is expected to grow by 3 percent this year, but it won’t be nearly enough to feed growing demand. This will lead to a 149 million-ounce market deficit. While the gap between supply and demand will shrink by about 19 percent from last year’s level, it will remain “sizeable historically.”

This is yet another reason to think silver is set up to shine.  Continue reading →

(Bloomberg) — Global stocks steadied from a selloff and US stock futures signaled a Wall Street bounce, as Bloomberg News … Continue reading →

A look at the day ahead in European and global markets from Tom Westbrook U.S. stocks finally caught up overnight … Continue reading →

Excerpt from this week’s: Technical Scoop: Market Tumble, Golden Rise, Job Weakness

Source: www.stockcharts.com

With a stock market in turmoil, trade wars with on again-off again tariffs (the yo-yo effect), huge uncertainty, the potential for the U.S. to fall into a steep recession, a breakdown in the West’s global order as the U.S. cozies up to Russia, potential loss of confidence in government, everything is being upended. Add in a sinking dollar and indications that the job market is tipping over and we have ideal conditions for gold as a safe haven. And this past week we got it with gold up 2.3%, even as the S&P 500 fell 3.1%. Gold up, stocks down. The new order of things?

At the recent high near $2,974 gold was somewhat overbought. The pullback has taken us back to neutral. No, we have not taken out the point where gold would be telling us we should take out the $2,974 high. That point comes to the fore over $2,944. Nonetheless, we have to be encouraged by the action. Elsewhere, silver gained 4.2% this past week, platinum was up 3.1%, while the near precious metals saw palladium gain 4.8% and copper up 3.5%. Copper, a leading indicator, closed at $4.71 and now $5 is in its sights.

Central banks continue to accumulate gold (but not the U.S.). They may be selling U.S. treasuries to pay for it. China’s central bank PBOC has been a steady buyer, continuing purchases for the fourth successive month.

Gold has also been flooding into the U.S. market, especially from London as buyers are looking to avoid tariffs on it going forward. It is not being imported for consumption purposes; rather, it’s being imported for stock piling and a safe haven. Gold, which is real, gives credence to a fiat currency knowing there is something there besides a promise (empty) to pay. And, no, cryptos are not the answer, despite the Trump administration’s attempt to create a crypto reserve. Cryptos, like fiat currencies, are merely a digital promise. They buy nothing (okay, little) and remain a favourite for money launderers and hackers looking to steal your cryptos.

Gold is back over $2,900 and we’d like to see gold hold that level. New lows below $2,844 spell trouble so we do not want to see that. All signs point to higher gold prices. We still have targets up to $3,600, but let’s get through $3,000 first. Economic uncertainty and geopolitical uncertainty—these conditions are ideal for gold. No wonder it has been the best-performing asset (setting aside Bitcoin) since November 5, 2024.

Source: www.stockcharts.com

Silver continues to frustrate. That’s setting aside predictions from numerous pundits, including well-known mining guru Eric Sprott, that silver is set to explode with potential targets as high as $200. Right now, even the all-time high seen in 1980 and again in 2011 near $50 seems distant. Silver can’t get out of the way of itself. Stories of supply shortages and more seems to have little impact. Others say shortage, what shortage? When we adjust those two highs for inflation, silver needs to reach $70 to equal 2011 and $193 to equal the 1980 high.

No wonder Sprott and others are calling for $200 silver. All it is, is the equal of the 1980 high on an inflation-adjusted basis. The infamous gold/silver ratio currently sits at a lofty 89. That’s a lot closer to the all-time high of 120 seen during the pandemic scare in 2020 than to the low of 29 seen in 2011 when both gold and silver topped out at the time at record highs. We’ve talked about the potential top in the gold/silver ratio until we are blue in the face, but still the topping pattern has not proved fruitful. However, with gold at record prices near $3,000, silver becomes attractive on a relative basis. It also has more upside potential if it can get out in front of itself, given how expensive gold is. Silver needs to break above $34 to suggest new highs above $35. At the same time, we would not like to see a pullback that takes out $31. The most recent high was $34.24, and at $32.81 we still need to see a break above $33.55 to suggest new highs above $34.24. We’re waiting.

Source: www.stockcharts.com

Gold stocks on the move? We have already passed the point that would suggest we should see new highs soon. Despite the weakness in the stock market, gold and gold stocks were up on the week. The TSX Gold Index (TGD) gained 3.5% while the Gold Bugs Index (HUI) did better, up 4.5%. They are now up 23% and 18.6% respectively so far in 2025. Hardly anyone is close. The recent pullback has helped create a potential uptrend line. It breaks if we go back under 400. The pullback took the TGD from overbought back to neutral. It never got oversold. That could be a positive development. Nonetheless, we need to see new highs, hopefully this coming week. We are only 9% under the 2011 now. But that’s on a nominal basis. On an inflation-adjusted basis we remain almost 34% under the 2011 high. We’ve already passed the point that suggests we should make all-time highs above the nominal basis top of 455 seen in 2011. So, there is lots to be optimistic about. We’re even seeing some signs of life in the junior gold mining stocks that dominate the TSX Venture Exchange (CDNX). What we haven’t seen is a wholesale move towards them. Any strong move towards these junior stocks could quickly result in doubles, triples, and even 10-baggers in a hurry. It’s a thin market. But they have what the seniors need: more resources.Read the FULL report here: Technical Scoop: Market Tumble, Golden Rise, Job Weakness

Disclaimer

David Chapman is not a registered advisory service and is not an exempt market dealer (EMD) nor a licensed financial advisor. He does not and cannot give individualised market advice. David Chapman has worked in the financial industry for over 40 years including large financial corporations, banks, and investment dealers.  The information in this newsletter is intended only for informational and educational purposes. It should not be construed as an offer, a solicitation of an offer or sale of any security.  Every effort is made to provide accurate and complete information. However, we cannot guarantee that there will be no errors. We make no claims, promises or guarantees about the accuracy, completeness, or adequacy of the contents of this commentary and expressly disclaim liability for errors and omissions in the contents of this commentary.  David Chapman will always use his best efforts to ensure the accuracy and timeliness of all information. The reader assumes all risk when trading in securities and David Chapman advises consulting a licensed professional financial advisor or portfolio manager such as Enriched Investing Incorporated before proceeding with any trade or idea presented in this newsletter. David Chapman may own shares in companies mentioned in this newsletter. Before making an investment, prospective investors should review each security’s offering documents which summarize the objectives, fees, expenses and associated risks.  David Chapman shares his ideas and opinions for informational and educational purposes only and expects the reader to perform due diligence before considering a position in any security. That includes consulting with your own licensed professional financial advisor such as Enriched Investing Incorporated.   Performance is not guaranteed, values change frequently, and past performance may not be repeated. Continue reading →

Gold eases early Monday as the dollar firms, after rallying last week on concerns about the global economic outlook. The … Continue reading →

By Johann M Cherian and Pranav Kashyap (Reuters) -U.S. stock index futures fell on Monday as worries persisted that tit-for-tat … Continue reading →

With around-the-clock tariff headlines pounding stocks, recession calls or predictions for a sharp economic slowdown are coming into the light. … Continue reading →

Summary The US economy added 151,000 jobs in February, slightly below expectations, with private sector gains offsetting federal job losses. … Continue reading →

Often ignored, silver plays a crucial role in modern nuclear energy, but practically unknown is silver’s new critical role emerging from the power plants of the future, fusion.

The importance of silver’s thermal and electrical conductivity, as well as its reflectivity, can not be understated. Silver’s best qualities are being exploited to make the new generation of energy possible.

Fusion power is the long-awaited upgrade to fission and may be coming just in time as Artificial Intelligence is increasing electricity demands on the grid, and this trend is unlikely to be abated.

Announced late December 2024, Commonwealth Fusion Systems unveiled plans for the world’s first grid-scale commercial fusion power plant that will be built in Chesterfield County, Virginia, and expected to come online by 2030.

The new fusion power plant, named ARC, will generate about 400 megawatts of clean, carbon-free electricity for about 150,000 homes. ARC is positioning the U.S. to lead the world in harnessing a new form of safe and reliable energy that could prove critical for economic growth and national security.

Around the world, fusion power is being adopted as the next leap for mankind.

ITER is the international nuclear fusion research and engineering megaproject where the EU, China, India, Japan, Korea, Russia ,and the US have come together to complete the world’s largest fusion reactor.

[embedded content]More than 130 experimental nuclear fusion reactors, both public and private, are in operation, being built, or planned in 50 countries across the globe, according to a December 2022 report by the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA).

About 90 are in operation.

Most of them are based on the ITER core designs, which, for various components, rely on silver’s exceptional properties to get the job done.

Belo,w we explore some of the ways we found that silver is being used for the construction of these monumental human undertakings of science. There are several components of the fusion design that rely on silver, which is putting a strain on the overall supply.

18 grammes of pure silver, with hollows as neutrons and gold-plated beads as protons. Latvia’s central bank has dedicated a new collector 5-euro fusion coin to “scientists’ persistence in seeking answers to questions about the future of humanity.”

High Temperature Superconducting (HST) Tape

ITER’s magnets—toroidal field (TF), poloidal field (PF), central solenoid (CS), and correction coils (CC)—require current leads to deliver up to 68 kA from room-temperature power supplies to the 4.5 K superconducting environment. HTS current leads reduce heat load to the cryogenic system compared to traditional copper leads, cutting refrigeration power by about two-thirds. Silver is integral to the HTS tapes within these leads.

According to the UK fusion startup Tokamak Energy, magnetic fields are used in the tokamak to confine and control the electrically charged plasma that constitutes the fusion reactor’s “fuel”.

High-temperature superconducting (HTS) tape is generally used in strong electromagnets that are used to confine plasma in magnetic-confinement fusion reactors.

The magnetic fields are generated by passing large electrical currents around arrays of electromagnet coils that circle the plasma, and those magnets are wound from what Tokamak Energy calls “groundbreaking” HTS tapes.

Faraday Factory has been producing HTS tapes since 2012, and Coherent says that demand for the tape is expected to increase by a factor of ten between now and 2027.

Several manufacturing steps are needed to make the tape, with the Japanese firm using ion beam assisted deposition (IBAD), pulsed laser deposition (PLD), silver magnetron sputtering, and copper electrochemical plating.

Silver magnetron sputtering is a physical vapor deposition (PVD) technique used to deposit thin films of silver onto a substrate. It’s a process commonly employed in industries like electronics, optics, and materials science to create coatings with specific properties, such as reflectivity, conductivity, or corrosion resistance.

Here’s how it works in simple terms:

In a vacuum chamber, a silver target (the source material) is bombarded with high-energy ions, typically from a plasma of an inert gas like argon. A magnetic field, generated by a magnetron, confines the plasma near the target, enhancing the efficiency of the process. This bombardment knocks silver atoms loose from the target, and they travel through the vacuum until they land on the substrate, forming a thin, uniform layer.

The “magnetron” part refers to the use of magnets to trap electrons, which increases the ionization of the gas and makes the sputtering more effective, even at lower pressures.

Silver is often chosen for its excellent electrical and thermal conductivity, as well as its reflective properties, making it useful for things like mirrors, solar cells, or conductive coatings.

The Silver Shields

Another major and critical component of the fusion design is the thermal shields.

Thermal shields are installed to limit the heating of the superconducting magnets, in particular due to radiation from the cryostat and the vacuum vessel. 

Silver has the highest thermal conductivity of all known metals (429 W/m•K). For this reason, silver has been chosen as the element best suited to ensure the safety of the operation.

Components of the Tokamak are coated in a thin layer of silver that covers the entire surface.

Silver is critical to its design because it raises an obstacle against the thermal radiation in the form of electromagnetic waves.

The plating of the vacuum vessel thermal shield was done in electrolysis baths that required 5 tons of pure silver. Approximately 800 kilos went into the coating of the 2,000 square meters of vacuum vessel thermal shield.

A real-size mockup for a large section of vacuum vessel thermal shield is undergoing the step-by-step process of silver coating.

This work, part of Korea’s contribution to ITER, has been conducted by companies like SFA Engineering Corp in Changwon, South Korea.

The vacuum vessel thermal shield comprises nine 40° sectors. Sector #6 is pictured here, ready to be packed and shipped to ITER.

As a secondary, while being constructed, silver is also integrated into shielding for sensitive electronics to mitigate electromagnetic interference (EMI) or radiation effects.

Superconducting Magnets

Silver is used as a matrix material in niobium-tin (Nb₃Sn) and niobium-titanium (Nb-Ti) superconducting cables. The silver matrix provides stability by conducting current during transient events (e.g., quenches) and enhances mechanical strength.

Electrical Systems

The issue with the busbars in the ITER project involved the need for effective electrical insulation capable of withstanding the high voltage and harsh operational conditions within the superconducting environment.

The challenge was to ensure that the insulation provided uniform coverage, minimized the risk of electrical faults, and could maintain long-term reliability under extreme conditions.

This led to the use of James Cropper’s silver-coated nylon and copper-nickel carbon nonwoven veils to enhance the insulation’s performance and durability.

Silver-coated nylon and copper-nickel carbon were chosen for the ITER busbars due to their excellent electrical conductivity, corrosion resistance, and ability to provide effective electromagnetic shielding.

The silver coating on nylon enhances the material’s conductivity and resistance to oxidation, while the copper-nickel carbon veil offers durability and high thermal and electrical conductivity. These properties were essential to ensure reliable and uniform insulation capable of withstanding the extreme operational conditions within the superconducting environment of ITER.

Neutral Beam Power Supply

Silver contacts and connectors are being used in ITER’s high-power systems for efficient energy transfer.

Hosted across two buildings and an outdoor technical area (centre and right), the ITER neutral beam power supply installation comprises an array of transformers, generators, rectifiers, inverters, and other exotic electrical devices designed to feed at 1 MV ultra high voltage to the injectors.

Optical Diagnostic Systems

One of the first optical diagnostic systems in the ITER tokamak chamber, where the plasma cleaning system has to be implemented, is the Visible Spectroscopy Reference System (55.E6.VSRS), which will be used for line averaged measurements of the visible continuum emission of the core plasma. 

This system utilizes large-scale collecting mirrors for the in-vessel collection system. These mirrors are located out of line with the vision of fusion plasma. They rely on a high-reflective silver-based coating.

Transmission lines use coaxial type cables in all cases that are made with copper and partially coated with silver.

High-Temperature Brazing Alloys

Silver-based alloys (e.g., Ag-Cu) are used to join components in the vacuum vessel, cooling systems, and magnets, ensuring strong, leak-tight, and thermally conductive joints.

Thermal Management

Silver-filled thermal pastes or pads may be used to enhance heat transfer in high-heat-flux areas, such as between plasma-facing components and auxiliary cooling systems

Vacuum Systems

Silver’s low outgassing properties make it suitable for ultra-high vacuum seals in the vacuum vessel and diagnostic ports.

[embedded content]

There are no alternatives to being the best, and as demonstrated, being the best means silver is called on for making possible humanity’s most incredible feats of advanced engineering.

Silver will continue to enhance humanity’s future prosperity as long as it’s available, but this energy-dependent future for some countries may not be realized should the silver supply crisis continue unabated.

To ensure the United States has its necessary supply, designating silver as a critical material is more important than ever!

Additional Sources:

MIT spinout, Commonwealth Fusion Systems, unveils plans for the world’s first fusion power plant

MIT spinout Commonwealth Fusion Systems has announced plans to build the world’s first grid-scale fusion power plant in Chesterfield County, Virginia.

MIT News | Massachusetts Institute of TechnologyZach Winn | MIT News

Low-Temperature Properties of Silver – PMC

Pure silver is used extensively in the preparation of high-temperature superconductor wires, tapes, films, and other configurations in which the silver not only shields the superconducting material from the surrounding materials but also provides a…

NCBI home page

https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S0920379621004300

https://www.researchgate.net/publication/283137704_Investigation_on_silver_electroplating_process_for_ITER_thermal_shield

https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S0920379620300946

There are about 90 nuclear fusion reactors operating worldwide

More than 130 experimental nuclear fusion reactors, both public and private, are in operation, being built, or planned in 50 countries across the globe, according to a December 2022 report by the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA). About 90 are in operation, most of them tokamaks or stellarators, which use forms of magnetic confinement to heat and compress plasma in an effort to achieve nuclear fusion. In addition to the National Ignition Facility (NIF) in California, only five other facilities, all of which are smaller than the American lab, currently use laser beams to study this type of reaction: one…

Marcos Pivetta

DEMO Thermal Shield Concept Design Requirements and Expected Thermal Loads – JET

DEMO Thermal Shield Concept Design Requirements and Expected Thermal Loads – JET.pdf

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https://nucleus.iaea.org/sites/fusionportal/Shared%20Documents/FEC%202020/fec2020-preprints/preprint1157.pdf

MIT-designed project achieves major advance toward fusion energy

For the first time, a large high-temperature superconducting electromagnet was ramped to a field strength of 20 tesla, the most powerful magnetic field of its kind ever created. The demonstration helps resolve the greatest uncertainty in the quest to build the first fusion power plant that can produce more energy than it consumes, according to project leaders at MIT and startup Commonwealth Fusion Systems (CFS).

MIT News | Massachusetts Institute of TechnologyDavid Chandler | MIT News Office Continue reading →