Why Bullion Buying will Again Break Records this Year

Added: 2026-05-10

[00:00:01]I traveled earlier this week to New York City for an instudio segment on silver.

[00:00:05]Now in early May 2026, somewhere down there, I was amongst those skyscrapers with the following six or so minutes of points made.

[00:00:15]China is experiencing a historic surge in buying silver imports surged to a multi-year high. Joining us now to talk about this is James Anderson, senior precious metals analyst at SD Bullion.

[00:00:27]So James, good afternoon. Thank you so much for being here today. Um, so the question is, uh, how much silver is China buying and why is it important?

[00:00:37]>> So in March, uh, just about a month ago, they bought over 800 tons in one month.

[00:00:42]That's generally two to three times the regular flow. So it kind of tripped off people in my industry to understand why this is happening. In the beginning of the year, people have been watching the silver price. They saw silver run over $120. It's since receded falling down, you know, to 75 roughly today in spot price. So, it's been a pretty big draw down. Uh there's been a few things that have happened at the beginning of the year. They've they've kind of clamped down on the amount of people who can export silver out of the country. So, so some of the smaller exporters, they don't really export as much silver as now. And so, you see a clamp down on the flows out and a much much larger amount of buying in. So it's showing you that I think there's they're they're concerned because silver is essential to them for all the manufacturing they do in terms of you know they're number one in terms of cars and solar panels etc. And I think the Iranian situation too is also boosting the amount of people throughout Southeast Asia, Asia, Europe as well who are planning on buying more solar. So I think there's combination of of things going on there and China is starting to scramble for more silver.

[00:01:42]>> Okay. So what is the significance here?

[00:01:45]Why does it matter? It matters because you're living in a world now that's running on a just in time basis for silver. So we're going to have a situation in the coming years where you're going to have problems with with the amount of supply that's available.

[00:01:56]So that run from silver running from say $60 to $100 $120 that happened at the end of last year and the beginning of this year. It's not over. There's going to eventually become another rolling squeeze on the silver price. You'll see silver run to multiple hundreds of dollars per ounce in the next 2 three years. I'm not saying it's imminent. It could happen at the end of this year, but it will happen in the next few years. You're you're running into a situation where there's deficits in the supply and there's much more demand than there is supply.

[00:02:22]>> So when we say China's buying sulfur, who are we talking about specifically?

[00:02:25]Is it the government? Is it companies, investors?

[00:02:28]>> It's mostly the manufacturing side, the investing side is growing there because China, I mean, they do buy gold generally, culturally, that's usually what they buy. They also have a VAT tax of plus 13%. Because they see silver as mostly an industrial input, but there's an investment uh growing investment amount of people buying silver. I think they bought around 20 million ounces last year in investment silver. And as gold gets more unafford and much more expensive um and silver starts to outperform gold, you're going to see them switch to a lot of silver and they don't care about the 13% VAT. You'll see a mania on the silver side in China as well.

[00:03:02]>> Okay. Okay. So, can you talk a little bit more about the impact of this record um silver buying? Are there any supply chain impacts or concerns about this much buying?

[00:03:11]>> So, the major silver supply like places where you find silver in the world, it's generally London and comics, you know, there's warehouses throughout the the east coast here in the United States and then Shanghai. Shanghai has gotten down in the last 10 years or so to the lowest levels they were at in the mid 2010s. So they've been buying is because the combination of their warehouses are very low and Londons are historically at very low low levels and the comxes are falling back down toward low levels. So the combination of all three areas you're seeing draw downs. And so even the silver institute itself says you're probably looking at a situation where the silver price will be stout for the rest of the year but we are looking at a future where the price volatility will be high and mostly upside because of these factors.

[00:03:51]>> Okay. So talking about the future how how long is this buying spree going to last? Is this like a short-term thing?

[00:03:57]Yeah, the demand factors for silver is the reason why silver is so important is because it's so important for all the electric things that we use, right? In terms of AI, even in terms of solar panels, in terms of electrification, electric vehicles, uh virtually anything in the studio has to have silver in its guts. And so, if we want to continue to build out and and and digitize the world, you're going to need a lot more silver. If you're talking about robotics, virtually anything that's cutting edge has to have silver because you have to have electric conductivity at the fastest, best rate. And silver is just it's one it's a mustave.

[00:04:29]>> Okay. How sensitive is the market right now to uh to you know ch China buying silver?

[00:04:34]>> It's not I mean right now what you're seeing is people probably looking at the market thinking you know it went from 120 down to 75 and they probably don't understand the fundamentals that are underlying this. And so what you saw recently was more of a momentum trade that really ran in hot money ran in drew drew silver very high quickly and now it's receded. uh but what underneath the fundamental factors are very very good both industrially and eventually store of value wise I mean in terms of investment play so you have a situation right now where the hot money's probably gone off to oil or to what have you other things that are Iran related um but it'll come back at some point that's just inevitable gold and silver are in a bull market and this is probably going to be a rolling type of thing that you'll see in the next 2 three four five years >> okay so so to put simply essentially you're very bullish on silver >> mhm yeah very bullish I'm not telling you Tomorrow the price is going to double, but I'm telling you within the next few years it will, >> right? Okay. So, I mean, do you think silver is a better investment right now in terms of value or gold?

[00:05:33]>> So, that's a hard question. When I someone asked me that, I I always ask them what their interest is. Is it is it first and foremost to preserve what you own, then you should own some gold because it's not as volatile. If secondly, you want to have it actually enhance what you own and actually buy more, I'd tell you you need to have some silver. Right now, like the S&P 500 costs about 100 ounces of silver for the nominal S&P. If history repeats, it'll go to 20 ounces of silver probably by the end of this decade. So, you have an ability if you hold silver bullion over the stock in the S&P 500 to basically enhance your buying power by five times.

[00:06:05]That's basically the type of swing trade I'm talking about like a four-year play where you own bullion now and you trade it when it gets to about 20 ounces for the nominal S&P 500.

[00:06:14]>> Okay, last question here. um physical gold or silver better or paper silver or gold?

[00:06:20]>> It's physical because you're living in a world where the return of your capital is more important than a return on capital. I mean, you look out in the future, there could be a lot of failure.

[00:06:29]So, you want to make sure you you actually own what you have. You don't want to have anybody in between what you own. There's a lot of um problems I think that will come in the future for people who think that they don't think that the counterparty risks. So having it in your possession and or in a non-bank account like a Brinks, a Lumis, that's the that's the way to do it.

[00:06:46]That's the safest way.

[00:06:47]>> Well, all right. Terrific insight today, James. Thank you very much.

[00:06:50]>> Pleasure. Nice to meet you.

[00:06:51]>> Nice to meet you.

[00:06:53]>> The nominal S&P 500 ecliped 7,400 this week. Stock bubble bulls celebrated. On a price to earnings 10-year average, only the prior 2000 internet stock bubble ever peaked higher. Generally, after such stock market bubbles come and go, we witness stock bare markets that can endure for a decade or longer. I mentioned in the interview that the S&P 500, measured by Silver Bullion, is currently historically high, closing at about 92 ounces of silver this week to afford one nominal share of the S&P 500.

[00:07:23]That level is still well higher than the peaks seen in 1929 or during the Nifty50s stock market bubble of the 1960s.

[00:07:32]The blue line of 59 is where we bottom ticked at the end of January 2026 just a few months ago when spot silver neared 120 an ounce. But since this is a monthly chart, normie onlookers would not notice that we've already broken sub 60 an ounce and are merely consolidating gains before the next silver bullion outperformance versus US stocks continues.

[00:07:56]My longerterm target of 20 an ounce buying the S&P 500 is merely in line with what investors lived through for decades following 1929 and the late 1960s. A picture a more humble future world that actually has to produce shareholder value instead of fiat financialized hype, share buybacks, and accounting gimmicks.

[00:08:15]Similar but less pronounced story measuring the current S&P 500 by gold bullion. It ended this week at 1.57 ounces of gold to afford the nominal record high S&P 500, right around the same peak as 1929 and well above 1:1 parody, which is often a brief stopping point before lowering much further down during typical commodity bull markets that follow stock market bubbles.

[00:08:39]A half ounce of gold being able to afford the nominal S&P 500 is a pretty conservative target longer term into next decade. Of course, what's happening with our nation's fiat currency in the world at large when that time comes?

[00:08:52]That's still highly questionable with so much debt and unfunded liabilities to come due.

[00:08:57]This month's ban of Chinese sulfuric acid exports and the lack of supplies thanks to the Iran war halting trade is building a messy situation not merely with food fertilizers around the world, but also in the refining of silver related base metals like copper and zinc worldwide.

[00:09:15]Silver supply mostly comes from a combination of copper and lead zinc mining. Sulfuric acid is a key component for many silver byproduct producing miners. Get ready to see lower outputs of silver supplies to come given the shortage of sulfuric acid supplies.

[00:09:31]Sad news this week with an explosion at Glen Coror's Kazink refining facility in Kazakhstan which led to the death of two people while injuring five others. Reports are the destruction was confined to one refining building. The CAS Inc. 1,000 ounce silver bar hallmark is by far the largest single 1,000 ounce bar brand backing the world's largest unsecured silver ETF so with around 18% of the entire reported underlying silver bars being those from that specific zinc refiner.

[00:10:07]After this brief message, we'll be back with a more precise and relatively accurate way to think of central bank gold buying ongoing and growing. We're going to be right back.

[00:10:18]Hello, this is James Anderson on behalf of SD Bullion. Smash the like button if you enjoy these bullion market updates and be sure to visit sdbullion.com/swepstakes to enter our free silver monster box giveaway.

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[00:10:58]The silver and gold markets were both up on the week. The spot silver price climbed to close at $80.34 an ounce bid.

[00:11:05]The spot gold price climbed 100 bucks, closing the week at $4,714 an ounce bid.

[00:11:10]The spot gold silver ratio coil is now threatening a possible breakdown lower, closing this week at 58.

[00:11:19]The price for silver in China is hovering near 90 an ounce. Price premiums locally for platinum and palladium respectively also remain elevated relative to Western world price benchmarks.

[00:11:30]The combined Shanghai Futures Exchange and Shanghai Gold Exchange warehouses have been sucking silver into their warehouses and now holding 45.5 million ounces to end this week. Basically, that's enough industrial silver to cover about 1 and a2 years of their nation's worldleading car manufacturing production. It's still not that much relatively speaking. In other words, the central bank of Poland is back buying gold reserve tonnage, seemingly hellbent on growing towards its publicly stated 700 ton target. China added this past month just over 8 tons or over 250,000 ounces. Again, that was in last month, April 2026, adding gold reserves for the 18th month in a row. Allow me to put their last 18 months of gold bullion buying into 21st century context.

[00:12:19]And I remain convinced that China and Russia have had a tacet agreement to mimic one another's official gold reserve holdings going all the way back to 2008 global financial crisis where China began leading with large one-time additions in 2009 and 2015. Then Russia ran with the gold reserve stacking baton during the late 2010s. And now China in the 2020s has been slowly accumulating to match where both nations now have just over 2,300 metric tonses of gold reserves respectively to date officially. Of course, they both have other holdings official balance sheet using sovereign wealth funds and internal bank holdings. It's that opacity that requires precious metal data hounds like myself to constantly keep on top of their import, export, and internal mining data to garner a truer idea of what their real gold holdings are likely to climb to in time.

[00:13:12]You've seen this 21st century physical gold flow chart before. India and China dominate the world's gold at large, gold demand at large.

[00:13:20]Well, now we have a similar physical silver flow data chart for this 21st century.

[00:13:26]It again illustrates that both industrial powerhouse China and India are both silver market giants in the eastern world.

[00:13:34]These physical flow charts reflect that for every 3 ounces of silver heading east in the 21st century about 1 ounce of gold has also gone that route. To close this week, I want to remind everyone when financial media show historically high and record central bank gold reserve buying, especially since the year 2020, two to not merely consider the unprecedented amounts that they are actively buying in overall weight terms. What is as important to consider is how much buying is happening in fiat currency terms with rising gold spot prices. If we simply assume an $850 ton estimate for this year's central bank gold buying at an average price of say $5,000 an ounce gold, we see in fiat US dollar terms, the collective central bank buying is growing year after year.

[00:14:22]Since the freeze of Russian assets and now with this Iran war and world trade flows breaking up, who thinks this record high gold buying trend is going to reverse anytime soon?

[00:14:35]For those of you adding to your own personal central bank positions, be sure to check out SD Bullion's deal page this weekend for 1oz gold coin at spot deal and a pre921 silver Morgan coals under spot deal.

[00:14:48]That will be all for this week's bullion market update. As always to you out there, take good care of yourselves, those you love.

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[00:15:05]Analysis and discussion provided by SD Boyan Inc. at sdboy.com and related media platforms is for education and entertainment purposes only. It's not recommended for trading purposes, nor is any of this content financial advice.

[00:15:15]Employees and contributing authors to SD Bullion are not investment advisors and information obtained here should not be taken as professional investment counseling. The commentary on sdbullion.com reflects the opinions of respective authors and not that of SD Bullion, Inc. Your own due diligence is recommended before buying or selling any investments, securities, and or precious metals.