The situation with silver is becoming even more ludicrous.

As I've previously noted, according to the CME's registry there are 440 million ounces of silver located in its depositories. However, the current silver futures contract  which settles in late March 2026  has an open interest of 150,200 contracts. At 5,000 ounces of silver per contract, this comes to 751 MILLION ounces of silver contracts trading… or 1.7 TIMES the amount of actual silver the CME has stored in various depositories.

Put another way, the CME is permitting silver contracts to trade that are backed by NOTHING.

The CME, rather than addressing this issue, has chosen to introduce a new silver futures contract, the mini silver contract, that represents the right to buy or sell 100 oz of silver (as opposed to the usual 5,000 oz).

The catch?

This new contract is settled "financially" meaning there is ZERO silver backstopping it.

Put another way, rather than doing something to address the fact that much of the current silver trading is backstopped by nothing, the CME is doubling down by introducing NEW derivatives that are EXPLICITLY financial in nature… with ZERO actual exposure to silver itself.

Does this fix anything?

Nope.

Will it fix the potentially systemic issue for silver that will hit when the current silver contract expires on March 27th 2026?

Nope.

And if you think this ISN'T a systemic issue… consider that the CME doesn't just trade silver futures… it also trades stock, bond and other commodities. And not a little either… average daily volume for the CME's futures contracts if $11 TRILLION.

What happens to the financial system when traders begin to realize that the CME is allowing derivatives to trade that are backstopped by NOTHING?!?!

Silver at $100 per ounce? $200 per ounce?

Investors have a small window of time to prepare for this.