1️⃣
9M new SLV shares = new metal has to show up.
Rough math: ~0.90 oz per share (after fees).
That’s ~8.17 million oz ≈ 254 metric tons of silver.
2️⃣
Think about what that means:
254 tons moved into ETF custody and becomes encumbered by the trust structure.
➡️ Free float goes DOWN.
3️⃣
Free float = the “available” pool that can actually move, deliver, and settle stress.
When ETFs absorb metal, the market loses circulating liquidity.
That’s how squeezes start:
Not with headlines… with inventory getting sticky.
4️⃣
Now the really interesting part:
You’ll often notice a pattern:
✅ Big SLV share creations
↘️ and silver price falling (or getting capped)
Because creations can appear during selling/hedging flows.
5️⃣
But yesterday?
No cap. No dump. No rug.
Silver went UP anyway.
That’s a tell.
6️⃣
If the market can absorb 254 tons being locked and still rise, it suggests:
🔥 The underlying bid is stronger than the usual “pressure valve.”
🔥 Physical tightness is creeping into the price mechanism.
7️⃣
They had to bring in a truckload of metal…
…and the market said:
“Cool. We’ll take that too.” 😈
8️⃣
So what does it likely signal?
✅ Physical demand is real, persistent
✅ Wholesale bars are being pulled into “non-floating” hands
✅ The paper market is having a harder time dominating the tape
9️⃣
And zoom out: China has been draining visible inventories hard (SGE/SHFE).
Now the West is also locking metal into ETFs.
That’s a two-front drain.
1⃣0️⃣
If this keeps happening, watch what breaks first:
📌 spot premiums
📌 futures spreads
📌 delivery stress / tightness signals
📌 “Where’s the metal coming from?” questions
1⃣1️⃣
Stacker takeaway:
You don’t need to “time the top.”
You need to own the metal before the scramble.
Because when free float shrinks, price doesn’t move smoothly…
It jumps.
1⃣2️⃣
This isn’t hype.
It’s mechanics.
254 tons got tied up… and price STILL climbed.
That’s not normal behavior in a loose market.
That’s what a tightening market looks like. ⏳🪙
1/ Something big is happening in silver – and almost nobody in the West is paying attention.
Turkey and China just sent the loudest signal yet that physical silver is getting tight.
Thanks to @jameshenryand and @oriental_ghost
2/ Start with Turkey.
October 2025 was their 2nd largest silver import month ever:
👉 182.2 tonnes
👉 ≈ 5.86 million oz in one month
In a “small” market like silver, that’s not a rounding error – that’s a cannon blast.
3/ To put it in perspective:
🌍 Global mine supply is ~850M oz/year.
One single country just took 0.7% of annual mine supply in one month.
That’s about 2.5 days of total world mine production – sucked into Turkey alone.
1/ 🚨 Something big is happening in London silver.
In the first 3 weeks of November, silver ETFs/ETCs added +496 metric tons (~16M oz).
At the same time, LBMA “free float” went down.
That’s not just chart noise – that’s structural pressure on physical. 👇
Thanks to @mypreciousilver
2/ What the chart shows:
Blue + green bars = silver held in ETFs/ETCs (SLV, BlackRock, many smaller funds).
Orange = LBMA “free float” – bars not already tied up in ETFs, long-term holdings or allocated accounts.
When ETFs grow, they suck metal out of that orange bar.
3/ November so far:
▶️ +496 t into ETFs/ETCs
▶️ +194 t just in the last week
▶️ Most of that from inflows into BlackRock + SLV on behalf of London/NY.
But here’s the punchline ⬇️
It’s not only SLV doing the damage…
1/ People think “the market is fine because regulators see everything.”
But the SEC’s Consolidated Audit Trail (CAT) keeps telling a very different story.
CAT was created under SEC Rule 613 to be a single, accurate record of all equity and options activity in the US – the ultimate surveillance tool.
2/ The scale is insane: industry members alone are estimated to send tens of billions of records per trading day into CAT. That’s hundreds of billions of rows every single day.
You can’t run a system like that with sloppy data… and yet that’s exactly what is happening.
3/ Recent CAT “Equities – Industry Aggregate Trade Date Statistics” tables circulating online show a column called “Overall Errors Count” for each trade date.
If you sum those daily errors for roughly one month, you end up with about 1.9 billion erroneous records in equities alone.
Even if that specific export is off by some margin, the order of magnitude matters.
🔥 THREAD: The Silver Clock Is Ticking – And Almost No One Sees It 🔥
This isn’t hype. This isn’t emotion.
It’s arithmetic – and it’s brutal.
1️⃣
China is quietly draining its silver vaults.
If the current pace holds, exchange stocks hit zero in roughly 2 months.
Not a slogan.
Just math from SGE/SHFE reports.
2️⃣
Start of the period (late September 2025):
• SHFE vaults: ~1,189,648 kg
Mid-November 2025:
• SHFE vaults: 576,894 kg
Drawdown: –612,754 kg in 46 days
≈ 13 tonnes per day – just from the futures exchange.
3️⃣
Spot side – SGE weekly vaults:
• Late September: 1,216,965 kg
• Early November: 822,420 kg
Drawdown: –394,545 kg
≈ 9 tonnes per day leaving visible inventories.