Скачать или смотреть CM 4 IT'S HAPPENING- China Pays $72 For Silver While USA Gets $67 — The Market Just Broke

1. *“The $5 Signal: How a Shanghai Silver Premium Proved the Global Market Has Fractured”*

2. *“Same Silver, Two Prices: The 7.6% Gap That Broke Commodity Arbitrage”*

3. *“Why a $5 Silver Premium Changes Everything About the Global Market”*

4. *“Arbitrage Is Dead: The Shanghai Silver Price That Exposed a Broken System”*

5. *“December 29, 2025: The Day Global Silver Pricing Stopped Working”*




*December 29, 2025. 9:13 a.m. Shanghai time.*
The Shanghai Silver Exchange opens with silver trading at **$72.40 per troy ounce**. At that exact same moment—**9:13 p.m. Eastern Time, December 28**—COMEX silver futures in New York settle at **$67.30**.

Same metal. Same day. Two prices separated by more than *$5 per ounce**, a **7.6% premium* paid by Chinese buyers over American buyers for identical silver.

That price gap has now persisted for *three consecutive weeks* without closing. And that fact alone tells us something historic has broken.

In a normal commodity market, a $5 spread creates instant arbitrage. Traders buy silver where it’s cheap, ship it to where it’s expensive, sell it, and pocket the difference. That buying pressure lifts the low price, selling pressure pushes down the high price, and the gap closes—usually within hours. This mechanism has governed commodity markets for centuries.

But it isn’t happening.

The Shanghai premium has existed since *December 3, 2025**—**21 straight days* of a massive, obvious arbitrage opportunity that nobody can execute. Chinese buyers are paying more than necessary. American sellers could earn more than they’re receiving. Yet no metal moves.

Why?

Because silver can no longer move freely across borders.

China imposed refined silver export licensing on **November 28, 2024**. The United States finalized its own export restriction framework on **December 15, 2025**, effective **January 1, 2026**. Between those two policies, the free flow of silver ended. What was once a unified global market has fractured into **isolated regional pools**, each pricing silver independently based on local scarcity.

This means the Shanghai price is not an anomaly. It’s not a glitch or speculation. It is *real price discovery* under constrained supply.

China produces roughly *118 million ounces* of silver annually but consumes approximately **658 million ounces**, leaving a structural deficit of more than **500 million ounces per year**. Even after accounting for domestic refining capacity, China still faces an import shortfall of over **260 million ounces annually**—a gap that is growing as solar, EV, semiconductor, and AI infrastructure demand accelerates.

At the same time, global export restrictions are tightening. Import supply is shrinking. So Chinese industrial buyers are doing the only thing they can do: **pay whatever premium is necessary to keep factories running**. A 7–8% premium is cheaper than shutting down production lines.

This is what genuine scarcity looks like.

We’ve seen this pattern before—gold in March 2020, platinum in 2021–22, rare earths from 2010–2014. Geographic price premiums appear when metal can’t move. They persist not until “sentiment changes,” but until policy changes—or alternative supply chains are built.

Silver is now entering that same phase, but with one critical difference: this isn’t a logistics issue. It’s deliberate government policy layered on top of structural shortage.

The result is permanent **multi-tier pricing**:
U.S. paper prices near $67.
U.S. physical $75–$80.
Europe higher still.
China higher again—but only for approved users.

The unified global silver price is dead.

The Shanghai premium is your warning signal. The market has already fractured. The only question left is whether you recognize what’s happening while positioning is still possible—or after allocation systems replace free markets and physical metal becomes unavailable at any price.