Stacker's Deep Dive: COMEX Cracks, Silver Surges

PLUS: Industrial Demand Explodes

Author

Silver Nutshell
June 17, 2025

Silver Nutshell: Stacker’s Deep Dive – June 17, 2025 Edition 🧊
 Because “buy the dip” only works if you know where the silver’s actually hiding.

What’s inside the vault today:
📦 COMEX is cracking
🏭 Industrial black hole
📉 ETFs in withdrawal
⛏️ Miners behind the curve
💬 Stacker sentiment check

📦 COMEX INVENTORY IS A JOKE

Let’s pull back the curtain on the COMEX warehouse. Spoiler: It’s not pretty.

  • Registered Silver (deliverable): ~28.9M oz

  • That’s down ~40% YoY

  • 2020 highs were >150M oz

  • Coverage ratio (open interest vs deliverable silver): now pushing 100:1

This is paper silver theater.

Even a modest physical squeeze—say, a 50M oz ETF inflow—would vaporize the vaults.

And get this:
JP Morgan, the largest silver custodian, has been quietly reducing both registered and eligible stockpiles for 5 straight months.

🏭 INDUSTRIAL BLACK HOLE

Silver isn’t just sitting around on ships or in vaults. It’s being used up—at record pace.

The industrial demand surge:

  • Solar: 400M+ oz forecast for 2025 (highest ever)

  • EVs: 2–3 oz per vehicle = 150M+ oz needed this year

  • 5G, AI servers, medical tech? All silver-hungry

According to Metals Focus:

“2025 will mark the fourth consecutive year of supply deficits. We see no easing until 2027.”

Translation: you’re stacking what industry can’t get enough of. That’s the makings of a historic squeeze.

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📉 ETF DRAWDOWN IS REAL

People joke that ETFs are just paper trackers. But when silver gets hot? That paper gets shredded.

Here’s the flow:

  • SLV has lost ~42M oz in 2025 so far

  • PSLV is gaining—stackers are voting with their wallets

  • European silver ETFs have also seen redemptions due to bar unavailability

This tells you two things:

  1. Paper ETFs are getting drained

  2. Premiums on allocated, deliverable silver are on the rise

And stackers know: if you can’t hold it, you don’t own it.

⛏️ MINERS AREN’T READY

You’d think $36+ silver would have miners running wild. Not quite.

Most major silver miners are:

  • Still digging out of cost overruns from 2021–2022

  • Dealing with labor shortages, energy costs, and nationalization risk (Peru, Mexico)

Even First Majestic and Pan American haven’t boosted forward guidance meaningfully yet. Why?

Silver supply isn’t “on tap.”
It’s mostly a byproduct of other metals like lead, zinc, and copper.

So even with soaring prices… mine response is slow. That’s bullish.

💬 STACKER SENTIMENT

What are the OGs doing?

🟢 Physical premiums climbing:

  • 1oz ASEs: $7–10 over spot

  • 10oz bars: $3–4 over spot

  • Kilos? Basically sold out at major retailers

🟢 Reddit & Twitter stackers:

  • Posting weekly pickups again

  • Talk of “monster box summer” trending

  • Buying hand over fist while gold hogs the headlines

🟢 YouTube crowd:

  • Calling this the last good accumulation zone before $40, $50, $75

And they might not be wrong.

THE STACKER’S EDGE 🥷

You know the game:

  • Buy when it’s boring

  • Hold when it’s wild

  • Sell when CNBC starts tweeting silver memes

We’re not there yet. Retail is still on the sidelines.
COMEX is still pretending to have metal.
The Fed’s about to cut.
And the world’s building its future on silver wiring.

You're not late.
You're early—with conviction.

HOW DID WE DO? 🤷 

🥜🥜🥜🥜🥜 “Brilliant blend of headlines and hard money.”

🥜🥜🥜 “Loved the depth. More mining supply next issue?”

🥜 “Too macro. Wanted charts or price levels.”

DISCLAIMER: The content of this newsletter is not financial advice. This newsletter is strictly educational and is not investment advice. Please be careful and do your own research.