The LBMA's monthly silver stock report appears to be claiming more growth than UK monthly silver imports can explain - by about 866 metric tons net from November 2024 through December 2025.
The LBMA's monthly silver stock reports vary widely from the UK's net imports of silver. The LBMA's total silver vault stock (including ETFs vault stock) shouldn't increase in one month more than the UK was able to import in that month, yet this is what has been claimed on many occasions. Is it a defect of the import data or LBMA reporting?
In the last few months, I noticed that the LBMA's monthly silver stock reporting (more specifically, the gain/loss from the previous month) did not seem to be consistent with UK silver export data (specifically to India). I've mentioned it several times while calculating my own "realistic" estimates based upon the import-export data (see here for the most recent as of the time I'm composing this). This led me to consider comparing the historical data on LBMA monthly silver vault stock reporting versus the UK net imports to see what insights might be gained.
Nick Laird aggregates and publishes tons of data on the gold and silver markets on his Gold Charts R Us website. Included in that vast trove, Nick gets import/export data for the UK et al. The source data is always reported by value (in local currency) and not by weight/tonnage. To translate the source value to tonnage, Nick divides the total by the average price for the month. Hence, the import/export tonnage is an estimate as we don't have sufficient granularity in the data to match imports/exports to the price at the time of recording.
Recently, I noticed a discrepancy between the UK's import data and the USA's export data:
I expected there to be some marginal differences between the USA and UK data as shipping times undoubtedly play a role, but 176t (~5.6M ozt) seems a bit too much to be explained by shipping lag alone. I queried Grok for potential answers and the response has a lot to unpack. The most important point for our purposes here was this:
I reached out to Nick and he confirmed that he is not including any factor to his UK import data to account for the "international freight, insurance, and other charges to the UK port of entry". Therefore, for my analysis here, I've adjusted Nick's raw import data estimates down 10% to account for the additional costs.
The chart shows that for some months, the LBMA claims gains exceeding UK imports and other times it claims less. Checking the net difference from November 2024 through December 2025, it appears the LBMA has claimed their silver stock grew by 866.15 metric tons (~27.8M ozt) more silver than the UK imported during the same period!
The 866t is of course just an estimate. There can be defects in the estimate:
The LBMA's monthly silver stock reports vary widely from the UK's net imports of silver. The LBMA's total silver vault stock (including ETFs vault stock) shouldn't increase in one month more than the UK was able to import in that month, yet this is what has been claimed on many occasions. Is it a defect of the import data or LBMA reporting?
Background
In the last few months, I noticed that the LBMA's monthly silver stock reporting (more specifically, the gain/loss from the previous month) did not seem to be consistent with UK silver export data (specifically to India). I've mentioned it several times while calculating my own "realistic" estimates based upon the import-export data (see here for the most recent as of the time I'm composing this). This led me to consider comparing the historical data on LBMA monthly silver vault stock reporting versus the UK net imports to see what insights might be gained.
Import/Export Data
Nick Laird aggregates and publishes tons of data on the gold and silver markets on his Gold Charts R Us website. Included in that vast trove, Nick gets import/export data for the UK et al. The source data is always reported by value (in local currency) and not by weight/tonnage. To translate the source value to tonnage, Nick divides the total by the average price for the month. Hence, the import/export tonnage is an estimate as we don't have sufficient granularity in the data to match imports/exports to the price at the time of recording.
Scrutiny Begets Questions Begets Answers
Recently, I noticed a discrepancy between the UK's import data and the USA's export data:
I expected there to be some marginal differences between the USA and UK data as shipping times undoubtedly play a role, but 176t (~5.6M ozt) seems a bit too much to be explained by shipping lag alone. I queried Grok for potential answers and the response has a lot to unpack. The most important point for our purposes here was this:
Grok said:
I reached out to Nick and he confirmed that he is not including any factor to his UK import data to account for the "international freight, insurance, and other charges to the UK port of entry". Therefore, for my analysis here, I've adjusted Nick's raw import data estimates down 10% to account for the additional costs.
Results
The chart shows that for some months, the LBMA claims gains exceeding UK imports and other times it claims less. Checking the net difference from November 2024 through December 2025, it appears the LBMA has claimed their silver stock grew by 866.15 metric tons (~27.8M ozt) more silver than the UK imported during the same period!
Considerations
The 866t is of course just an estimate. There can be defects in the estimate:
- the tonnage estimate (derived from source value divided by the average monthly price) doesn't reflect a non-uniform import schedule (where more silver was imported at a price well higher or lower than the monthly average)
- the extra costs for importation ("international freight, insurance, and other charges to the UK port of entry") could be more or less than the 10% factor I used