Silver Demand Drivers (and vault totals)
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Update (all values in metric tons) (see post #282 for last month):
* London ETF numbers through Nov 27 for most ETFs, through Nov 28 for SLV.
If these numbers are to be believed (and I do not believe the LBMA number), the West has roughly 16,937 metric tons vaulted at LBMA + COMEX not owned by ETFs. That's a decrease of 661 metric tons over last month's report which might seem reasonable except for the India issue:
Given the India issue, I would have expected to see the LBMA vault stock be at least ~500 metric tons less than what they are reporting.
Accepting the LBMA numbers are real, the total global free float including China (SFE/SGE) is 18,183 metric tons (a decrease of ~911 tonnes). That's a ~4.8% drop in one month (and likely higher if I'm right about the LBMA overstating their vault stock).
PSLV's silver vault stock is not directly available for settling COMEX or LBMA deliveries, so it is not included in free float totals - I include it because every 1,000 ozt that PSLV acquires is an LGD silver bar that is no longer available to the LBMA or global free float for trade settlement. PSLV had a quiet month in November adding just 10% of what was added in October.
I am now tracking the global vault stock changes every day/week for the COMEX, SFE/SGE, SLV and PSLV. Of course, there is no daily or weekly data for the LBMA because they are run by dinosaurs. The LBMA apparently thinks their monthly grand total report provides sufficient transparency to their operations as they say:
I frequently receive comments asking why I bother compiling this data. The comments commonly claim that the numbers are a fraud or they don't matter. Whether or not the numbers are completely accurate or not, they are the only public data we have and they *are* telling a story - revealing the rip currents of physical demand underneath the frothy paper market trading.
India October import data
Sources:
LBMA: https://www.lbma.org.uk/prices-and-data/london-vault-data
LBMA ETFs:
^ and my own spreadsheet tracking of SLV inventory
COMEX: I am saving COMEX silver stock reports and tracking the totals in a spreadsheet now.
SGE/SFE: I am saving SFE/SGE vault totals from Xiaojun Bai's daily X tweets and tracking them in a spreadsheet now.
PSLV: I am saving Sprott's PSLV silver stock data and tracking the totals in a spreadsheet now.
Global Vault Stock (in tons) - November 2025
Market | This month | Last month | Difference |
|---|---|---|---|
| LBMA (total) | 27,187 | 26,255 | 932 |
| London vaulted ETFs* | 21,317 | 20,450 | 867 |
| LBMA-ETFs (free float)* | 5,870 | 5,805 | 65 |
| COMEX | 14,183.02 | 15,002.46 | -819.44 |
| SLV NYC Vault | 3,115.67 | 3,209.14 | -93.47 |
| COMEX-SLV (free float) | 11,067.35 | 11,793.32 | -725.97 |
| SFE/SGE | 1,246.077 | 1,495.854 | -249.777 |
| PSLV | 6,363.932 | 6,345.231 | 18.701 |
If these numbers are to be believed (and I do not believe the LBMA number), the West has roughly 16,937 metric tons vaulted at LBMA + COMEX not owned by ETFs. That's a decrease of 661 metric tons over last month's report which might seem reasonable except for the India issue:
- The LBMA likely overstated last month's vault stock number by at least 150 metric tons given Indian import data for October (see below for details)
- India surely was buying more silver in the month of November (they were projected to buy at least 1,000 tons)
Given the India issue, I would have expected to see the LBMA vault stock be at least ~500 metric tons less than what they are reporting.
Accepting the LBMA numbers are real, the total global free float including China (SFE/SGE) is 18,183 metric tons (a decrease of ~911 tonnes). That's a ~4.8% drop in one month (and likely higher if I'm right about the LBMA overstating their vault stock).
PSLV's silver vault stock is not directly available for settling COMEX or LBMA deliveries, so it is not included in free float totals - I include it because every 1,000 ozt that PSLV acquires is an LGD silver bar that is no longer available to the LBMA or global free float for trade settlement. PSLV had a quiet month in November adding just 10% of what was added in October.
I am now tracking the global vault stock changes every day/week for the COMEX, SFE/SGE, SLV and PSLV. Of course, there is no daily or weekly data for the LBMA because they are run by dinosaurs. The LBMA apparently thinks their monthly grand total report provides sufficient transparency to their operations as they say:
LBMA said:
I frequently receive comments asking why I bother compiling this data. The comments commonly claim that the numbers are a fraud or they don't matter. Whether or not the numbers are completely accurate or not, they are the only public data we have and they *are* telling a story - revealing the rip currents of physical demand underneath the frothy paper market trading.
India October import data
Sources:
LBMA: https://www.lbma.org.uk/prices-and-data/london-vault-data
LBMA ETFs:
^ and my own spreadsheet tracking of SLV inventory
COMEX: I am saving COMEX silver stock reports and tracking the totals in a spreadsheet now.
SGE/SFE: I am saving SFE/SGE vault totals from Xiaojun Bai's daily X tweets and tracking them in a spreadsheet now.
PSLV: I am saving Sprott's PSLV silver stock data and tracking the totals in a spreadsheet now.
Viking
Yellow Jacket
I know.
I'll take Two.... Just put it on my credit will ya.
Viking
Yellow Jacket
I'm at the end of a dirt road, so I always have to time my deliveries for when it has been dry, no rain for a while. Otherwise, those trucks get stuck.
There are times when hardcore is worth more than silver
Yesterday (12-5) in silverYesterday silver spot spiked above $59 before falling back to the $58 to $58.50 range. Let's look below the surface...
COMEX
The COMEX silver stock report for Thursday (COMEX reports activity for the previous working day) shows 455K ozt (14.2 metric tons) withdrawn primarily from JPM (~297K ozt) and MT&B (~157K ozt). There was also 305K ozt (9.5 metric tons) deposited in Loomis (mostly).
I mentioned in my previous daily report that I found it curious that a lot of the movements in any given vault whether received/deposited or withdrawn recently were lots of (or multiples of) ~600K ozt. It turns out that the COMEX ships 1,000 ozt silver bars in stacks of 30 bars per pallet and 20 pallets (600K ozt) would be right under the max load for a 20 ton semi truck.
1.4M ozt (44 metric tons) were moved from registered to eligible in the StoneX vault.
As the EFP spread has been bouncing from negative to positive and back from overnight to day to night, I had intended to watch it a bit closer yesterday, but I failed to do so as real life interrupted my computer time. As of this morning I'm seeing the EFP spread slightly negative at -$0.06 for the front month of December. It was -$0.64 yesterday morning (and possibly positive during the trading day?!?).
India
Indian futures as of the moment are showing the MCX February contract at ~$63.42/ozt and the March contract at $63.23/ozt. The March contract is at a $0.19/ozt discount to the February contract (it was a $0.24/ozt discount yesterday when I checked). The backwardation in the Indian futures market appears to be holding steady around the $0.20/ozt to $0.25/ozt. Looks like India still wants physical silver ASAP.
SLV
SLV shares available to borrow started and ended the day at 10M shares with little variation (or activty for that matter) throughout the day (again - 5th day in a row). The borrow fee rose slightly from 0.96% to 1.01% as of this morning. It would seem that no APs are raiding their vault stock at the moment, however ...
After five consecutive days of massive additions, yesterday Blackrock reported shedding 6M shares and JPM reported shedding 5.4M ozt (169.3 metric tons) from the vault stock. That's about a one third of the gains added over the last five days. Is this a sign that AP raiding has begun again?
The LBMA is supposed to released their monthly vault stock report yesterday. As I anticipated, it did not make sense given what we know of Indian imports and buying demand. Full analysis posted here.
PSLV
PSLV reports adding 606,209 new units to the trust and zero ozt to the vault stock. I think they still need to add another ~150K ozt (prev units) + ~200K ozt (new units) = 350K ozt to the vault per all the units added recently.