Welcome back, GoldBuzzers.

It's been a rough couple of weeks. Gold down from its highs, silver well off the January peak, miners not getting the love they deserve, and a war nobody asked for. But I came across something this week that may change how you look at this correction - and I think you'll want to see it.

Ok. Let’s get to it. 👇

Gold pushed back above $5,171 on Friday after February's jobs report came in ugly - the economy lost 92,000 jobs (Wall Street expected a gain of around 50-60K), unemployment ticked up to 4.4%, and December's numbers got quietly revised into negative territory. It was the third month of job losses in the past five, and the three-month payroll average is now barely above zero.

Traders immediately pulled rate cut expectations forward to July, and the dollar retreated from its weekly highs, giving gold and silver room to breathe. Silver bounced back above $84, clawing back some of its losses from earlier in the week when the Iran conflict was pushing the dollar higher and making life difficult for non-yielding assets.

Both metals are still digesting a volatile week - gold snapped a four-week winning streak with a 2% pullback, though it remains up roughly 18% year-to-date. The bigger picture hasn't changed: a labor market that's quietly falling apart, a Fed that's stuck between inflation fears and recession risk, and a Middle East conflict that shows no signs of cooling down. Gold ETFs also pulled in $5.3 billion in February alone. The bid under these metals isn't going away.

If you're feeling a little rattled right now, you're not alone. Welcome to the world of precious metals!

About a month ago, I was talking to one of the beta testers for GoldBuzz Insider (launching this month) and he asked a good question. He said that while the Insider models provide practical guidance on gold and silver prices which he’s now using for his own investing, he was also curious whether gold and silver's "fundamental price" could be accurately calculated and compared with the actual market price.

The idea would be to separate the physical market from the paper market. Take real-world supply (mine production, recycling, central bank sales) and real-world demand (central bank buying, jewellery, industrial use, investment bars and coins), then look at the spread between spot and futures prices to gauge whether physical metal is scarce or abundant. Strip out the speculative positioning, and you'd have an estimate of what gold would be worth if the price were set purely by people who actually want to hold the metal rather than traders flipping paper contracts.

I'd already proven in the early stages of Theseus that technical factors were far more predictive than purely fundamental ones in forecasting gold and silver prices. So I filed the idea away.

But then I saw something this week that did exactly what we'd been discussing - a set of charts from Monetary Metals, the Arizona-based precious metals firm run by Keith Weiner. Their team takes real-time bid and offer data, strips out the speculative noise, and produces what they call a "fundamental price" for gold and silver. It's their attempt to isolate what physical supply and demand are actually doing underneath all the paper market chaos.

The charts are updated daily. And right now, they're showing something that has never happened before in their data, which goes back to 1996.

The Gap

As of Friday night, the gold spot price closed around $5,171. Monetary Metals' fundamental price? A little under $7,000. That's a discount of 25%-30% meaning the physical market is telling you gold should be significantly higher than where it's currently trading.

Silver is even more extreme. Market price around $85. Fundamental price just under $130. A discount of almost 35%.

For almost 30 years, these two lines - market price and fundamental price - have tracked each other closely. Small divergences here and there, but nothing dramatic. Then in late 2025, the fundamental price for both metals began ripping upward while the market price lagged behind. The gap that's opened up is, according to their model, the largest on record.

In plain English: if this model is right, physical demand for gold and silver has never been this far ahead of what the spot price reflects.

One Model, Not Gospel

I should be clear - this is one firm's methodology. Keith Weiner is well-respected in the precious metals space, but it's not the only way to measure whether gold or silver is over or undervalued. No model is perfect, and they're upfront that there's no guarantee the market price moves to the fundamental price quickly.

But what makes it interesting right now is that it lines up with everything we're seeing in the physical market.

What the Dealers Are Seeing

Talking of which, I caught up with Andrew Sleigh at Sprott Money again yesterday. He'd just come back from PDAC - four days at the booth in Toronto, where they did $200,000 in over-the-counter sales, up from about $150,000 last year.

But away from the conference floor, the picture has shifted. Canadian buyers have gone quiet. His word for it was "crickets." After months of phones ringing non-stop - the whole industry backlogged, Brink's backlogged, everyone running flat out - things have cooled off sharply.

The result? Too much inventory. Sprott is now delivering in 7-10 days while some competitors are still quoting April. That tells you who managed the crunch better, but it also tells you that the frenzy from January has completely evaporated.

And yet, his bigger clients - the ones who were buying in thirds to average into six-figure positions - have stuck to the plan. Two or three purchases in, keeping dry powder for one more tranche if prices drop further. These aren't panic buyers or momentum chasers. They've done this before.

The people buying right now don't care about whether silver is $84 or $78 next Tuesday. They're building positions because they see where this is going over the next 12-24 months. The people who are scared? They're the ones sitting on their hands, waiting for it to get back to $120 before they feel safe buying again. We've seen this pattern repeat over and over before.

The 2008 Question

One thing Andrew raised that I think is worth sharing: if the broader stock market does crack - and it's looking increasingly fragile - what happens to metals?

In 2008, gold and silver got dragged down about 25% when the stock market fell 50%. But they recovered everything within a couple of weeks and then took off as QE kicked in. Andrew's view is that this time around, the response would have to be even faster - the market is more leveraged, more fragile, and the government can't afford to wait four months to start printing like they did back then.

The alternative scenario is that metals go the other direction entirely - investors flee stocks and run straight to gold and silver as the safe harbour. Either way, the dip would be temporary.

What I Make of All This

I don't think this correction is over yet. The dollar strength is real and the war is unpredictable. We could easily see another leg down before this consolidation is completed and we commence the next leg up.

But when you look at the Monetary Metals charts showing gold and silver more undervalued relative to physical fundamentals than at any point in 30 years of data - and when you hear from someone who moves millions in physical metal every month that the big buyers are quietly averaging in while everyone else hides - you’ll can’t be anything other than extremely bullish looking ahead.

I'll have a lot more to say about what my own systems are showing when GoldBuzz Insider launches later this month. For now, I'll leave you with this:

Corrections are where the money is made. You just don't know it until afterwards.

That’s all for this Sunday, folks! I’ll see you on Tuesday.

Before you go, please take a moment to rate today’s GoldBuzz and tell us how we did.

Rick Adams
Founder, GoldBuzz
rick@goldbuzz.com