Welcome back to our weekly update. I'm Charlotte Mloud with investingnews.com and we're going to run through a few of the week's biggest stories in the mining industry. If you enjoyed this video, don't forget to hit the like button, subscribe to our channel, and of course, leave us a comment below. Let's get into it. [music] Gold and silver are wrapping up yet another record- setting week that seen economic uncertainty and geopolitical tensions combined to push prices [music]


upward. The yellow metal moved decisively through 4,600 per ounce on January 12th, trading above that level for a decent amount of the week. For its part, silver reached what's perhaps an even more impressive price milestone, surging past 90 per ounce and breaking 93 on January 14th. At this point, there's a very long list of factors providing support for the precious metals, and we don't have time to touch on all of them today. [snorts] Instead, let's take a look at a few that have


been making headlines over the past week or so and break them down. First, there's the latest news in the clash between US President Donald Trump and Federal Reserve Chair Jerome Powell. On January 11th, Powell said that two days earlier, the Department of Justice had served the Fed with grand jury subpoenas, threatening a criminal indictment. [music] I had the chance to speak with Mario Inko, who runs the Monko 64 channel on YouTube not long after Powell's statement. [music] Here's


how he summed it up. They've subpoenaed documents and uh it's supposed to be related to the renovation of the Fed's headquarter in Washington DC, but J Pal came out and said it's not. It's basically because they want him to uh cut rates. And he he's probably right. I think they're they're using any kind of u uh [clears throat] let's say tricks to try to get rid of him because I I think uh the administration even though they talk about how the economy is doing so great they are


desperate. >> Trump himself has said he had no knowledge of the investigation and has also asserted that he's not interested in firing Powell whose term as Fed chair wraps up in May. Nevertheless, the situation has reignited concerns about Fed independence and has provided support for gold and silver, which tend to fare better when rates are lower. [music] The next Fed chair, who has not yet been appointed, is widely expected to fall in line with Trump. In addition to that, geopolitical tensions have


remained high. Venezuela [music] is still in the spotlight after its former president was removed by the US last week. [music] And this week, Trump warned that the US would intervene in Iran if its executions of anti-government protesters did not stop. Iran responded by saying it would strike US bases if that happened. Those events and others are boosting safe haven demand for gold as well as silver. [music] But I want to hone in on a couple more points on the silver side that I think are worth looking at. One


of those is the news that the US plans to hold off on new critical minerals tariffs after receiving the results of a section 232 investigation launched last year. While [snorts] a presidential proclamation states that imports of processed critical minerals and their derivative products do constitute a national security risk for the US, [music] the country will first take steps such as negotiating supply agreements with other nations. Silver was recently designated a critical mineral in the US and some market


watchers believe this news out of the US was responsible for a midweek price dip for the white metal. However, others continue to highlight silver's deeper underlying drivers. I [snorts] heard recently from Andy Sheman of Miles Franklin who emphasized that a key element supporting silver right now is the fact that more and more entities are standing for physical delivery of the metal. Here's how he explained what he's seeing. But I'll just simply say this, Charlotte, for years, and I've been


saying with you on every show we've ever done that the most well-informed, well-funded traders, and I'll highlight well-informed, that being the central banks, have been standing for delivery since 2020. Very unusual cuz really no one ever stood for delivery. And this started to accelerate. But all along the United States was not part of this game. We were seeing it in the global south with the bricks. And now all of a sudden we are seeing the most well-informed traders in North America uh stand for


delivery in massive amounts and and such that it's impossible for me to ignore. And I just wonder where all the experts, the so-called experts are in the mainstream, the Jim Kramers of the world who haven't even said, you know, it's interesting who's bringing in hundreds of billions of dollars of metal into the ComX. It's as unusual as 4T of snow in Death Valley in July. That is how unusual these these deliveries are and and to me that's really what is setting the trend.


>> I'll leave the link to the full interview with Andy in the video description. [music] If you have any questions for him on silver or gold, drop a comment below. I'll be speaking to him again in a couple of weeks at the Vancouver Resource Investment Conference. Thank you for watching. If you like this video, make sure you hit the like button and subscribe to our channel. We'd also love to hear your thoughts, so leave us a comment below.