Silver Prices Hit Record Monthly High as China’s Inventories Plunge and India’s Demand Soars
- Silver’s Record Month: Silver wrapped up October 2025 with its highest nominal monthly close ever, up an impressive 64% year-to-date, signaling growing investor momentum.
- Gold Holds Strong: Gold prices stayed resilient, closing the week just above $4,000 per ounce, while the gold-silver ratio slipped to 82, underscoring silver’s relative strength.
- China’s Silver Stocks Draining Fast: Inventories at the Shanghai Gold Exchange and Shanghai Futures Exchange have plunged by 193 million ounces since their 2020 peak — a major structural shift.
- India’s Expanding Role: India imported nearly 1,000 tons of silver in September alone and is ramping up solar projects that could lift silver demand by 10–13% globally by 2030.
- Silver as Collateral: The Reserve Bank of India will allow silver as loan collateral (up to 85% loan-to-value) starting April 2026 — a historic move elevating silver alongside gold in the financial system.
- Global Supply Deficit: The world silver market remains deep in deficit — about 800 million ounces short over the last five years — a trend fueling upward price pressure.
- ETF & Lease Rate Turmoil: Surging Indian ETF inflows and tightening London silver lease rates show how physical demand is reshaping short-term market dynamics.
- Analyst Targets: Industry forecasters like Metals Focus and LBMA attendees see silver potentially hitting $60/oz and gold $5,000/oz in 2026 — a bullish outlook rooted in supply constraints.
- Macro Risks Brewing: Rising U.S. M2 money supply, banking losses on long-term bonds, and renewed repo market stress point to cracks in the fiat system that could favor hard assets.
- Retail & Institutional Divergence: While central banks and private investors (notably in Russia and Asia) keep stacking gold, U.S. institutions remain underexposed — suggesting the bull run may still be early.
Fueled by collapsing inventories in China, soaring imports from India, and renewed central bank interest, silver closes October up 64% year-to-date — setting the stage for what could be its most explosive rally yet.
Silver finished October 2025 with its highest nominal monthly close ever, up +64% year to date.
But the fundamental drivers of the world's silver market—now and in the future —are what matter most.
The gold and silver markets traded flat, slightly down on the week.
The spot silver price ended the week at $48.58 oz bid.
The spot gold price closed the week just above the key round number at $4,003 oz bid.
The spot gold-silver ratio fell a few ticks, given silver's relative strength versus gold, ending the week at 82.
Silver finished this month of October 2025 with its highest nominal price monthly close ever, up +64% year to date.
But the fundamental drivers for the world's silver market moving forward are what matter most now and to come.
Let's begin with China's combined SGE & SHFE exchanges silver warehouse inventory levels, collapsing at a fast rate of late, having fallen -193 million ounce since its peak in late 2020 the year of Covid chaos.
And while videos like these are being quickly scrapped by the authorities of the Chinese internet, word is getting around there too, that silver is currently misplaced and needs a price rerating vastly higher than current long suppressed levels.
Again, the world silver market has been running a supply deficit to the tune of around -800 million oz over the past nearly five years.
That is basically that silver cube depicted there used up in excess. Picture it 13.4 meters or 44 feet tall and wide, gone poof and used up in excess of newly recycled and mined refined silver supplies these past near 5 years.
We learned this week, that India imported nearly 1000 tons or 32 million ounces of silver in last month September 2025. And about 40% of that Indian Sep silver importation came from the UK, nearly 13 million ounces and that was all before the recent London lease rate spike squeeze.
Of course there was also the massive silver ETF inflows into India in this month October 2025 which likely set the London lease rates spiking.
You can see here about 15 tons of silver bullion, so in other words India demanded about 25Xs that amount from the UK in September alone, and about 40X that amount for her unsecured silver ETF bullion inflows in October 2025.
And while things may have calmed down with tens of millions of silver ounces coming out of the COMEX and other warehouses to bring London lease rates down of late. This silver supply deficit situation is not settled by shuffling some relatively tiny excess silver supplies around in just in time delivery fashion for much longer. Spot prices need to climb.
Metals Focus knows this, thus they are calling for nearly $60 silver next year 2026. They are also calling for $5000 oz gold in 2026.
The LBMA conference recently held in Tokyo also asked hundreds of industry attendees their price predictions for next year. And the were in line with the guesses we just mentioned.
My long time precious metals trading Japanese sensei, Bruce Ikemizu-son pointed out this week to not be fooled by the supposed current calm returned to the silver market. The market deficit remains and upward price pressure is here for the long term.
Just one gander at the long term gold and silver price charts in fiat Japanese yen show that in order for silver simply to match what gold has already done in the land of the rising sun, well silver need to moon in nominal price by a multiple factor of 3.25X's it current fiat yen per ounce price.
Uh oh, look out the fiat US Dollar's domestic M2 currency supply has been rising of late.
And yes many banks on a mark to market basis are still looking at nearly $400 billion in collective losses on mostly US bonds that are in a structural bear market for at far as your eyes can see outwards.
And the fiat Fed REPO loan window just had some major borrowings to the tune of $50 billion in short term liquidity loans to end this week.
Speaking of getting potentially Great Taken in failing financial institutions.
I'm still out there stacking bullion and finding interesting silver bullion items out in the wild. You never what type of history you'll be forced to learn in your bullion acquiring.
Like for example this interesting silver bar which celebrates the original 1925 Standard Bank or later known as the Standard Trust Bank which failed by 1931, Great Taken into bankruptcy like thousands of other US banks during the Great Depression.
Happy to report that building it still in use, modified to serve as high end apartments often for the downtown workforce, one hundred years later.
But hey, they don't go on CBS' 60 Minutes or ring a bell right before Great Takings right, right?!
We learned this week from Bloomberg and sources in the Russia that private investors there have been buying gold bullion to the tune of over 60 metric tons per year since the 2022 freezing of Russian US Treasury debt assets.
For perspective the number one gold bullion coin issuer in the USA, the US Mint has to date this year only sold 7.8 tons of gold coinage between ASEs and AGB coins combined.
So the high net worth Russian have been stacking and saving in gold bullion taking the cue from their national central bank which acquire about 2000 tons of gold bullion as policy from 2005 to 2019.
Here in the USA, without the two years of COMEX gold bullion inflows, we'd basically be a net seller of gold throughout this entire 21st Century.
Let me further illustrate to you what a bunch of paper bug buffoons our higher net worth investment class is at the moment.
Since 2020, about 27Xs more capital has gone chasing stock bubble indexes, 21Xs more into the ongoing bond bear market, compared to put to work to work in gold and gold related.
So no, you're not late arriving to the bullion party now, you are on the cutting edge and still early.
