Submitted by Ronan Manly, BullionStar.com

With the ongoing #SilverSqueeze and huge associated dollar inflows into silver-backed Exchange Traded Funds (ETFs), it is now time to look at which of these ETFs store their silver in the LBMA vaults in London, England, and to calculate how much physical silver these combined funds store in those London vaults.

These LBMA London vaults are run by seven vault operators which comprise three bullion banks JP Morgan, HSBC and ICBC Standard Bank – and four security firms – Brinks, Malca-Amit, Loomis and G4S.

While many eyes have been fixated on the mammoth iShares Silver Trust (SLV), that is only part of the picture, and there are 13 additional silver-backed ETFs that store their silver in London that people may not be aware of.

By calculating how much silver the ETFs hold in London , we can determine how much available physical silver remains in the London LBMA vaults that is not already held by these ETFs. This then gives an estimate of how much room these ETFs have before they hit a wall of not being able to source any more silver in the London vaults without having to import it or ship it in. And the answer, as you will see below, is not that much room at all.

Because out of the 1.08 billion ounces of silver (33,609 tonnes) that the LBMA claims is stored in the London vaults (as per latest LBMA data to end of December 2020), a whooping 83.3% or 28,007 tonnes (900.42 million ozs) is already accounted for by these ETFs. This is based on ETF holdings as of end of day 5 February 2021.

Add in another 22.22 million ozs (691.3 tonnes) of silver held by Bullion Vault (BV) and Gold Money (GM) in the same London vaults, and there are a massive 28,698 tonnes (or 922.65 million ozs) of silver accounted for in the combined ETFs and in the BV/GM holdings. That’s 85.4% of all the silver that the LBMA claims is in the London vaults.

SNIP