That sounds like a contradiction, and I get it. But after sitting down with Ed Steer for the latest episode of Commodity Culture, it's the most honest way I can frame what he laid out.

Ed has been tracking the precious metals market since silver was $7 an ounce. He publishes Ed Steer's Gold and Silver Digest five days a week and has been one of the most consistent voices on the structural manipulation of silver and gold markets. What he explained in this conversation is that the same rigged system that's held silver down for decades is now, quietly, in the process of unwinding. 

This Correction Is Not What It Looks Like

Silver was at $83 in March. It's now sitting around $74. Most people are calling it a healthy consolidation. Ed has a different word for it.

According to Ed, eight large commercial traders saw prices going parabolic at the end of January and came in and hammered them lower. What we're watching isn't organic price discovery. It's what Ed calls a wash, rinse, and spin cycle, where the big shorts engineer the price lower to shake out long positions and cover as many of their short contracts as possible on the way down. We've seen this movie before, he said. This is just an extended version.

The data backs it up. Since June of last year, the big eight traders in silver have covered 43,000 short contracts. In gold, they've covered 88,000 since January 20th. Their short position right now is the lowest on record. Ed's watching carefully for when the non-commercial traders simply stop selling longs and going short, and he thinks we're close to that point. When the cycle completes, the stage gets set for the next rally.

The Bonfire of the Silver Shorts

Before we recorded, Ed brought up an article by the late Ted Butler called Bonfire of the Silver Shorts. It's worth understanding what that means.

When silver started rising last year, it wasn't just retail speculation driving it. The big commercial shorts were quietly covering their positions, and every contract they covered pushed the price higher. By December, retail speculators piled in and things started going parabolic. If the big eight hadn't stepped in and killed the rally when they did, Ed believes silver would have run another 48 hours into what he calls a panic short covering event. His estimate: silver would have been at $200, $300, $400 an ounce. A three-digit silver price was within reach, and they cut it off.

Here's why that matters now. With the big eight at their lowest short position ever, the next time prices rally, there may be nobody willing to step in and stop it. The remaining shorts still have to cover one way or another, and covering means buying. That buying triggers more buying. When it happens, Ed says it won't be measured in weeks. It'll be measured in days.

The Shanghai Premium and Who Is Setting the Price

Silver is currently trading at around a 10% premium in Shanghai versus Western markets. It's been as high as 16 to 18% in recent months. Ed cleared up a common misconception: this has nothing to do with VAT tax. That's added on top at point of sale and has no bearing on the exchange price gap.

What's actually driving it is raw demand. China and India together represent roughly a third of the world's population, and their appetite for physical silver is far higher than anything we see in North America. India has already stated it intends to set its own silver price rather than follow COMEX or LBMA. Ed's view is that right now, without exception, the price of silver is still being set on the COMEX futures market in New York. But China's stated goal is to eventually wrestle commodity price-setting away from the West and onto physical markets where paper contracts don't dominate. The day that happens, Ed says, is the day manipulation ends. Because you can't suppress a physical market the same way you suppress a futures market.

$300 to $500 Silver. Is It Realistic?

Michael Oliver came on the show recently and called silver at $300 to $500 this year based purely on technical analysis. I asked Ed if he agreed.

His answer was yes, and the reasoning was simple. Whether you use technical analysis or follow the commitment of traders data the way Ed does, you end up at the same destination. The structural deficit in silver requires a three-digit price. The only variable is timing, and the only people who control the timing are the big eight shorts. As Ted Butler used to say: tell me what the big eight are going to do, and I'll tell you where the price is going.

On the Dowd call of $10,000 gold by 2030, Ed pushed back slightly. Not on the target, but on the timeline. His view is $10,000 arrives well before 2030, because gold has never in recorded history been allowed to trade freely. Nobody actually knows what the true free market price is. Central banks are buying at a thousand tons a year and showing no signs of stopping. When the dam breaks, it won't be a gradual reprice. It'll be violent.

Fort Knox, the Dollar, and the Bond Market

Ed doesn't think Fort Knox will ever be audited in our lifetimes, regardless of what Trump posts on Truth Social. His reasoning: if the gold is all there, fine. But a significant portion is almost certainly encumbered, meaning paper has been written against it through swaps and leases. And a large portion of what is physically there dates back to Roosevelt's 1933 gold confiscation and isn't in good delivery form. An audit that reveals any of that ends badly. The powers that be simply will not allow it.

On the dollar, Ed's view aligns with what we discussed with Edward Dowd: dedollarization is a slow process, not a sudden event. There are roughly $18 to $20 trillion in foreign debts denominated in US dollars. Any country that tries to jump off the dollar overnight gets a deflationary crash. But the direction of travel is clear. The BRICS bloc, led by China, is working systematically through trade deals, payment systems, and commodity pricing to shift economic power from West to East. The dollar, Ed says, will be a casualty of that shift when it fully plays out.

On bonds, Ed is blunt: the 10-year yield is being actively managed. The US has $40 trillion in debt, and if rates were allowed to reflect reality, he thinks they'd be well north of 5 to 7%. The system can't survive that, so yields get capped. As Ed's colleague Chris Powell once put it: there are no markets anymore, only interventions. Everything you see, including the price of silver and gold, is being managed.

Why the Miners Look Like a Bargain Right Now

Major gold producers like Agnico Eagle and Newmont reported record earnings and saw their stock prices drop. Silver miners are underperforming the metal itself. Ed's explanation is that the management of precious metals markets has extended into the equities. He's been tracking the ratio of silver stocks to silver price for years, and starting in September there was a clear disconnection. Silver stocks outperformed silver by only 1.17x in 2025, while gold stocks outperformed gold by 2.14x. Something happened, and Ed believes it was deliberate.

The upside of that is that the miners are now selling for roughly one times earnings against a silver price that Ed believes is heading dramatically higher. That's the kind of setup that, in hindsight, investors look back on as obvious. When the next big rally comes in the metals, the miners will catch a bid. Ed doesn't know the exact timing. But he's clear that they're priced for pessimism at a moment when the structural picture for precious metals has never been stronger.

Why I Started Writing for You

I've been making videos on Commodity Culture for years, but there's only so much you can unpack in an interview format. The reason I joined ReadPlaza is to give you the written analysis that goes deeper alongside every episode. The data, the context, the frameworks behind what you're watching on screen.

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