Estimating LBMA silver vault stock as of the end of May 2026

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pmbug

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All vault stock quoted in metric tons:

Upper bound
Vault Stock = 27,651 (🔼from 27,454)
Free Float (FF) = 7,099 (🔻from 7,117)
Liquid (LFF) = 7,099 FF - 3421 illiquid = 3,678

Realistic? (using Jan-Mar F' factor)
F' Vault Stock = 27,393 (🔻from 27,454)
F' Free Float (FF) = 6,841 (🔻from 7,117)
F' Liquid (LFF) = 6,841 FF - 3421 illiquid = 3,420

At a spot price of $80/ozt, LFF = ~$8.8B to ~$9.5B

Big Picture​


The LBMA is due to report their end of May silver stock report on June 5 (Friday). LBMA dinosaurs apparently need 5 business days to figure out their end of the month total vault stock and even with that time, their report is not always consistent with UK silver import/export data. I calculate my own forecast estimate to keep the LBMA honest.

Last month, the LBMA again came in right in the middle of my two estimates. which was good. But as with last month, when we got March UK import/export data, we again saw a large disparity between the LBMA report and the UK import data.

Formula (Updated Factors through March)​


X = A - B + (((C * D) / E) * F)

X = LBMA free float vault stock
A = (27,454) LBMA vault stock (previous month)
B = (20,552.10) ETF London vault stock as of May 29
C = (392.9363) COMEX withdrawn for May
D = (0.5974🔻from 0.6004) Estimated % of COMEX Withdrawn that was exported to London
E = (0.6446🔻from 0.6455) Estimated % of USA import vs total UK silver imports
F = (0.3494🔻from 0.3749) Estimated % of UK imports that are NET (accounting for exports)
F'= (-0.1077%🔼from -0.2724) Average of Jan-Mar only as they are wildly outside the range of Oct-Dec

Special note - in February, the UK exported more than it imported. The "F" factor for February was actually strongly negative. It lowered the five month "F" factor average since October greatly, but my upper bound estimate will still be on the high side if net UK silver imports in May are closer to Jan-Mar (2%, -56%, 22%) than the 3 month average for October-December (~80% of the total imports). Thus, I include an F' estimate that reflects more recent large UK exports.

I did not adjust the "A" factor downwards according the March UK import discrepancy. If we factored the discrepancies for March and April, the LBMA vault stock would be ~520 metric tons lower.
 
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