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EndGame Macro
Silver Is Repricing In A Fractured World
Silver at $76 is the kind of move you see when a market quietly changes roles. For years, silver was ignored, dead money unless inflation dominated the headlines. Then, around early February 2025, its behavior changed.
That timing matters. February marked a clear turn in trade policy. New tariffs on China weren’t framed as a short term negotiating tactic, but as part of an emergency posture. That signaled a more permanent break in how global trade would function. Markets didn’t wait for full escalation. Behavior adjusted first.
Silver didn’t explode overnight. It simply stopped falling. Higher lows held. Pullbacks got bought. That was the regime shift. The vertical move everyone’s reacting to now came later, when thin liquidity met forced buying and silver did what it always does, it moved fast and violently.
What confirms this isn’t just paper positioning is Shanghai silver trading above $82 while COMEX sits at $76. When China is willing to pay a real premium, that’s not speculation, it’s physical demand showing up where price sensitivity matters most.
Why China Matters
Put yourself in China’s position.
You’re running a massive and still growing trade surplus. Relations with the West are openly hostile, sanctions risk is real, and the old assumption that surplus capital safely recycles into Western assets is breaking down.
Now look at home. China’s property market, the main store of household wealth is no longer a one way bet. Prices are falling, confidence is damaged, and leverage is unwinding. Real estate is no longer the default place to park savings.
So the question becomes where do you preserve wealth in a deflationary environment?
Capital controls limit outbound flows. Trust in foreign financial assets is weaker. Domestic property is declining. In deflation, leverage fails and growth assets disappoint. That leaves tangible, liquid assets outside the credit system. Gold is the first choice. Silver becomes the spillover.
This isn’t just central banks. It’s households. And in deflation, flows don’t rotate smoothly, they surge. In a market as small as silver, persistence shows up in price quickly.
The Global Layer
This isn’t only a China story.
Globally, silver’s industrial demand keeps accelerating. Solar installations are hitting records across China, Europe, and the U.S. EVs and charging infrastructure add steady demand. Silver gets consumed, it doesn’t come back in a market that’s been in structural deficit for five straight years.
India adds another leg. Despite record prices, physical imports surged again in late 2025. Festival demand and investment buying pulled metal east. Mine supply is flat. Recycling can’t close the gap. Shanghai premiums and backwardation aren’t anomalies, they’re signs of physical metal being absorbed worldwide.
Why Tariffs Are The Accelerant
Tariffs don’t spike prices by themselves. They change behavior.
Once companies and households believe supply chains are becoming less reliable and inputs may cost more later, they stop trusting just in time systems and start buying ahead. Demand gets pulled forward. Spot markets tighten quietly then suddenly.
Tariffs also weaken the old surplus recycling loop. In a deflationary world, when that loop breaks, financial assets deflate first. Hard assets benefit. Gold absorbs the conservative flow. Silver absorbs the reflexive one.
The Part People Forget
This isn’t a simple inflation hedge. It’s deflation colliding with deglobalization, policy easing, broken capital recycling, industrial demand, and physical scarcity.
Silver overshoots. It snaps back. That doesn’t negate what’s happening, it’s how silver behaves when trust, not growth, is being repriced.
BREAKING: Silver prices extend gains to +6% on the day, now at a record $76/oz.
Silver is now on track for its largest monthly gain since December 1979. https://t.co/6pZgLG60OX - The Kobeissi Letter tweet
Silver Is Repricing In A Fractured World
Silver at $76 is the kind of move you see when a market quietly changes roles. For years, silver was ignored, dead money unless inflation dominated the headlines. Then, around early February 2025, its behavior changed.
That timing matters. February marked a clear turn in trade policy. New tariffs on China weren’t framed as a short term negotiating tactic, but as part of an emergency posture. That signaled a more permanent break in how global trade would function. Markets didn’t wait for full escalation. Behavior adjusted first.
Silver didn’t explode overnight. It simply stopped falling. Higher lows held. Pullbacks got bought. That was the regime shift. The vertical move everyone’s reacting to now came later, when thin liquidity met forced buying and silver did what it always does, it moved fast and violently.
What confirms this isn’t just paper positioning is Shanghai silver trading above $82 while COMEX sits at $76. When China is willing to pay a real premium, that’s not speculation, it’s physical demand showing up where price sensitivity matters most.
Why China Matters
Put yourself in China’s position.
You’re running a massive and still growing trade surplus. Relations with the West are openly hostile, sanctions risk is real, and the old assumption that surplus capital safely recycles into Western assets is breaking down.
Now look at home. China’s property market, the main store of household wealth is no longer a one way bet. Prices are falling, confidence is damaged, and leverage is unwinding. Real estate is no longer the default place to park savings.
So the question becomes where do you preserve wealth in a deflationary environment?
Capital controls limit outbound flows. Trust in foreign financial assets is weaker. Domestic property is declining. In deflation, leverage fails and growth assets disappoint. That leaves tangible, liquid assets outside the credit system. Gold is the first choice. Silver becomes the spillover.
This isn’t just central banks. It’s households. And in deflation, flows don’t rotate smoothly, they surge. In a market as small as silver, persistence shows up in price quickly.
The Global Layer
This isn’t only a China story.
Globally, silver’s industrial demand keeps accelerating. Solar installations are hitting records across China, Europe, and the U.S. EVs and charging infrastructure add steady demand. Silver gets consumed, it doesn’t come back in a market that’s been in structural deficit for five straight years.
India adds another leg. Despite record prices, physical imports surged again in late 2025. Festival demand and investment buying pulled metal east. Mine supply is flat. Recycling can’t close the gap. Shanghai premiums and backwardation aren’t anomalies, they’re signs of physical metal being absorbed worldwide.
Why Tariffs Are The Accelerant
Tariffs don’t spike prices by themselves. They change behavior.
Once companies and households believe supply chains are becoming less reliable and inputs may cost more later, they stop trusting just in time systems and start buying ahead. Demand gets pulled forward. Spot markets tighten quietly then suddenly.
Tariffs also weaken the old surplus recycling loop. In a deflationary world, when that loop breaks, financial assets deflate first. Hard assets benefit. Gold absorbs the conservative flow. Silver absorbs the reflexive one.
The Part People Forget
This isn’t a simple inflation hedge. It’s deflation colliding with deglobalization, policy easing, broken capital recycling, industrial demand, and physical scarcity.
Silver overshoots. It snaps back. That doesn’t negate what’s happening, it’s how silver behaves when trust, not growth, is being repriced.
BREAKING: Silver prices extend gains to +6% on the day, now at a record $76/oz.
Silver is now on track for its largest monthly gain since December 1979. https://t.co/6pZgLG60OX - The Kobeissi Letter tweet
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EndGame Macro
Bitcoin Is Trading Like Risk And Metals Like Money
When a market is crowded with long perps, price doesn’t gently drift lower, it air drops. One level breaks, stops trigger, liquidations cascade, and the selling turns mechanical. That’s how you get a $3k move in under an hour. Not a new fundamental. Just positioning meeting thin liquidity.
Now look at what’s happening at the same time. Gold and silver are catching a bid like money, not like a trade. Silver ripping while Bitcoin wicks lower is the tape telling you where unlevered demand is going. In a deflationary impulse, people don’t reach for optionality first they reach for collateral. Metals benefit because they’re simple, liquid, and nobody can margin call the atoms.
Why Bitcoin Isn’t Following M2
People love the Bitcoin vs. global M2 chart like it’s a law of physics. It isn’t.
M2 tells you money exists, not where it’s willing to go. Bitcoin is a marginal asset, it trades on risk appetite, leverage, and market plumbing. Those are very different things.
If we’re sliding toward deflation, liquidity doesn’t behave like it did in 2020. It gets trapped.
It gets trapped in T-bills and money funds because risk free yield is still real competition. It gets trapped on balance sheets because refinancing walls, rising delinquencies, and tighter credit force cash to be used defensively. And in crypto specifically, it gets trapped because the transmission mechanism isn’t bank deposits…it’s stablecoins, leverage, and derivatives credit. If stablecoin growth slows, if exchanges tighten margin, if funding flips, Bitcoin can lag liquidity for a long time even while the aggregate money number rises.
That’s the core divergence where global M2 can go up while risk liquidity goes down. One means money exists. The other means money is willing to take volatility.
My View
This is what easing looks like when it starts for bad reasons.
The system gets more liquidity, but the private sector is deleveraging. Households are stressed. Credit quality is deteriorating at the edges. Cash is being used to refinance, roll debt, and plug holes, not to chase upside.
In that world, the first winners aren’t high beta trades. They’re collateral and scarcity assets like cash, bills, gold and sometimes silver when supply is already tight and momentum kicks in.
Bitcoin is just being treated like what it still mostly is in this phase which is a levered risk asset. It will catch up when the plumbing turns back on and when liquidation cycles clear, when stablecoin credit expands again, and when people stop using liquidity to repair balance sheets and start using it to take risk.
Until then, expect more of these fast, ugly flushes in BTC and a steadier bid in assets that don’t need leverage to work.
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Bitcoin Is Trading Like Risk And Metals Like Money
When a market is crowded with long perps, price doesn’t gently drift lower, it air drops. One level breaks, stops trigger, liquidations cascade, and the selling turns mechanical. That’s how you get a $3k move in under an hour. Not a new fundamental. Just positioning meeting thin liquidity.
Now look at what’s happening at the same time. Gold and silver are catching a bid like money, not like a trade. Silver ripping while Bitcoin wicks lower is the tape telling you where unlevered demand is going. In a deflationary impulse, people don’t reach for optionality first they reach for collateral. Metals benefit because they’re simple, liquid, and nobody can margin call the atoms.
Why Bitcoin Isn’t Following M2
People love the Bitcoin vs. global M2 chart like it’s a law of physics. It isn’t.
M2 tells you money exists, not where it’s willing to go. Bitcoin is a marginal asset, it trades on risk appetite, leverage, and market plumbing. Those are very different things.
If we’re sliding toward deflation, liquidity doesn’t behave like it did in 2020. It gets trapped.
It gets trapped in T-bills and money funds because risk free yield is still real competition. It gets trapped on balance sheets because refinancing walls, rising delinquencies, and tighter credit force cash to be used defensively. And in crypto specifically, it gets trapped because the transmission mechanism isn’t bank deposits…it’s stablecoins, leverage, and derivatives credit. If stablecoin growth slows, if exchanges tighten margin, if funding flips, Bitcoin can lag liquidity for a long time even while the aggregate money number rises.
That’s the core divergence where global M2 can go up while risk liquidity goes down. One means money exists. The other means money is willing to take volatility.
My View
This is what easing looks like when it starts for bad reasons.
The system gets more liquidity, but the private sector is deleveraging. Households are stressed. Credit quality is deteriorating at the edges. Cash is being used to refinance, roll debt, and plug holes, not to chase upside.
In that world, the first winners aren’t high beta trades. They’re collateral and scarcity assets like cash, bills, gold and sometimes silver when supply is already tight and momentum kicks in.
Bitcoin is just being treated like what it still mostly is in this phase which is a levered risk asset. It will catch up when the plumbing turns back on and when liquidation cycles clear, when stablecoin credit expands again, and when people stop using liquidity to repair balance sheets and start using it to take risk.
Until then, expect more of these fast, ugly flushes in BTC and a steadier bid in assets that don’t need leverage to work.
BREAKING: Bitcoin falls nearly -$3,000 in 45 minutes as $70 million worth of levered longs are liquidated. https://t.co/ffFp8vlU1m tweet
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EndGame Macro
M2 Hit A Record, But The Rate Of Change Is Slowing
Yes, M2 just hit a record. That sounds like liquidity is everywhere but that’s not how this works.
M2 is a level. It’s the accumulated stock of cash like balances sitting in the system that includes deposits, savings and money funds. Over long stretches, that number almost always rises. Bigger economy, higher nominal prices, more financial plumbing. That’s the baseline.
The mistake is treating the level like it’s the driver. Markets don’t move on the amount of money, they move on the change in momentum of money.
The Rate Of Change Is What Actually Moves Markets
When you look at it year over year, M2 is up about +4.3% YoY as of November 2025 but once you adjust for inflation, real M2 is only up about +1.5% YoY. That’s a turnaround from the contraction phase, but it’s not a surge.
More importantly, the acceleration already happened. The sharp positive impulse, the moment when money growth flipped from deeply negative to positive is behind us. Since then, the growth rate has been decelerating, not reaccelerating.
That matters because markets tend to react strongest at inflection points. The first derivative of growth turning positive gave you relief. The second derivative of growth speeding up or slowing down tells you whether risk appetite should expand or contract.
Right now, that second derivative is flattening. Money is growing, but less enthusiastically each month.
Think of it like the system took its foot off the brake. It didn’t step on the gas.
Why This Isn’t Easy Money In Practice
In a healthy expansion, rising money supply shows up as higher velocity. Cash moves. It gets spent, invested, levered, recycled. That’s when asset prices broadly inflate.
That’s not what’s happening now.
Instead, money is accumulating defensively. It’s sitting in money funds, T-bills, short duration instruments. It’s being used to refinance debt, roll maturities, absorb losses, and rebuild buffers. The velocity side of the equation is still weak.
This is why you can have…
• record M2,
• rising delinquencies,
• weak consumer sentiment,
• higher bankruptcies,
• and fragile risk markets
all at the same time.
The money exists, but it’s being treated like insurance, not fuel.
Historical Context Matters Here
When M2 growth explodes like in 2020 it overwhelms everything. Velocity spikes, risk appetite explodes, correlations tighten, and almost all assets rise together.
But when M2 growth merely stabilizes after a contraction, the system behaves very differently. That pattern shows up in late cycle and post crisis periods where policymakers are trying to prevent collapse, not engineer a boom.
This looks much closer to damage control liquidity than expansionary liquidity.
My View
Record M2 doesn’t mean the system is flush. It means the system is cautious.
The growth rate turning positive tells you the tightening phase is over. The growth rate slowing tells you the easing phase is defensive, not aggressive.
For this to turn into a true risk on environment, you’d need to see…
• reacceleration in M2 growth,
• rising velocity,
• improving credit quality,
• and willingness to take balance sheet risk again.
Until then, money will keep piling up without circulating.
The cash is there.
The confidence is not.
tweet
M2 Hit A Record, But The Rate Of Change Is Slowing
Yes, M2 just hit a record. That sounds like liquidity is everywhere but that’s not how this works.
M2 is a level. It’s the accumulated stock of cash like balances sitting in the system that includes deposits, savings and money funds. Over long stretches, that number almost always rises. Bigger economy, higher nominal prices, more financial plumbing. That’s the baseline.
The mistake is treating the level like it’s the driver. Markets don’t move on the amount of money, they move on the change in momentum of money.
The Rate Of Change Is What Actually Moves Markets
When you look at it year over year, M2 is up about +4.3% YoY as of November 2025 but once you adjust for inflation, real M2 is only up about +1.5% YoY. That’s a turnaround from the contraction phase, but it’s not a surge.
More importantly, the acceleration already happened. The sharp positive impulse, the moment when money growth flipped from deeply negative to positive is behind us. Since then, the growth rate has been decelerating, not reaccelerating.
That matters because markets tend to react strongest at inflection points. The first derivative of growth turning positive gave you relief. The second derivative of growth speeding up or slowing down tells you whether risk appetite should expand or contract.
Right now, that second derivative is flattening. Money is growing, but less enthusiastically each month.
Think of it like the system took its foot off the brake. It didn’t step on the gas.
Why This Isn’t Easy Money In Practice
In a healthy expansion, rising money supply shows up as higher velocity. Cash moves. It gets spent, invested, levered, recycled. That’s when asset prices broadly inflate.
That’s not what’s happening now.
Instead, money is accumulating defensively. It’s sitting in money funds, T-bills, short duration instruments. It’s being used to refinance debt, roll maturities, absorb losses, and rebuild buffers. The velocity side of the equation is still weak.
This is why you can have…
• record M2,
• rising delinquencies,
• weak consumer sentiment,
• higher bankruptcies,
• and fragile risk markets
all at the same time.
The money exists, but it’s being treated like insurance, not fuel.
Historical Context Matters Here
When M2 growth explodes like in 2020 it overwhelms everything. Velocity spikes, risk appetite explodes, correlations tighten, and almost all assets rise together.
But when M2 growth merely stabilizes after a contraction, the system behaves very differently. That pattern shows up in late cycle and post crisis periods where policymakers are trying to prevent collapse, not engineer a boom.
This looks much closer to damage control liquidity than expansionary liquidity.
My View
Record M2 doesn’t mean the system is flush. It means the system is cautious.
The growth rate turning positive tells you the tightening phase is over. The growth rate slowing tells you the easing phase is defensive, not aggressive.
For this to turn into a true risk on environment, you’d need to see…
• reacceleration in M2 growth,
• rising velocity,
• improving credit quality,
• and willingness to take balance sheet risk again.
Until then, money will keep piling up without circulating.
The cash is there.
The confidence is not.
BREAKING: US M2 money supply rises another +4.3% YoY in November 2025, to a record $22.3 trillion.
This marks the 21st consecutive monthly increase.
Money supply is now $400 billion above the March 2022 peak.
Since 2000, money in circulation has grown at an average rate of +6.3% per annum.
Meanwhile, inflation-adjusted M2 rose +1.5% YoY in November, marking its 15th-straight monthly increase.
The US Dollar's purchasing power is deteriorating. tweet
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Take advantage of our New Year offer and Save 20% on a subscription to The Daily Feather now or to our QI Pro Subscription —
https://t.co/QP3cvp4b6e https://t.co/x5VMDp0Say
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Questions Everyone Should Be Thinking About as 2026 Approaches
1. What’s the historical precedent of the year over year moves of Gold and Silver over the past year?
2. What’s the historical precedent of the current delinquency rates on credit cards, auto loans and student loans?
3. What’s the historical precedent of the current 2025 Chapter 11 and Sub V filings? (You need to add them both together because prior to 2020 Sub V filings were included in Chapter 11 bankruptcies)
4. What’s the historical precedent of the current vacancy rates of commercial properties and more specifically commercial office? And what does that mean for tax revenues of cities and towns across the U.S.?
5. What’s the historical precedent in the amount of commercial loan debt needs to be refinanced in 2026 at higher rates? And what are the ramifications for Banks? Lending? Etc..
6. Whats is the historical lag effect when the Fed has started cutting rates and taken measures like Quantitative Easing to materialize into the economy that is already in or entering a recession?
7. What is the historical precedent for the amount of Amercians that are voluntary and non voluntary working part time jobs as of December 2025?
8. What price historically does oil need to be for U.S. oil drillers and refiners etc.. to stay profitable and what happens when oil gets blow that? And what is the price of oil now?
9. How concentrated is the current U.S. Stock Market compared to 1929, 2000 and 2008? And what happened after?
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Questions Everyone Should Be Thinking About as 2026 Approaches
1. What’s the historical precedent of the year over year moves of Gold and Silver over the past year?
2. What’s the historical precedent of the current delinquency rates on credit cards, auto loans and student loans?
3. What’s the historical precedent of the current 2025 Chapter 11 and Sub V filings? (You need to add them both together because prior to 2020 Sub V filings were included in Chapter 11 bankruptcies)
4. What’s the historical precedent of the current vacancy rates of commercial properties and more specifically commercial office? And what does that mean for tax revenues of cities and towns across the U.S.?
5. What’s the historical precedent in the amount of commercial loan debt needs to be refinanced in 2026 at higher rates? And what are the ramifications for Banks? Lending? Etc..
6. Whats is the historical lag effect when the Fed has started cutting rates and taken measures like Quantitative Easing to materialize into the economy that is already in or entering a recession?
7. What is the historical precedent for the amount of Amercians that are voluntary and non voluntary working part time jobs as of December 2025?
8. What price historically does oil need to be for U.S. oil drillers and refiners etc.. to stay profitable and what happens when oil gets blow that? And what is the price of oil now?
9. How concentrated is the current U.S. Stock Market compared to 1929, 2000 and 2008? And what happened after?
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