Title:   John Butler: Is the Metals Correction Over? RAM Suggests So
Show:    Prinsights (Substack) — Guest contribution (excerpt), paid
Guest:   Nomi Prins (founder/CEO, Prinsights Global) sharing John Butler (Amphora Report)
Date:    2026-JUL-02
URL:     https://prinsights.substack.com/p/john-butler-is-the-metals-correction
Length:  written post (no timestamps) — public excerpt of Butler's Amphora Report piece
Note:    Guest excerpt; no securities named. Macro/metals-speculation item -> key-points page, no stock table. Body reproduced from the public excerpt for personal study.

Prinsights shares insights from international investment consultant John Butler of the Amphora Report. Below is an excerpt of Butler's research.

Back in January I presented evidence of dangerously high speculative interest in metals, in particular silver. Sure enough, a large correction began shortly thereafter and has continued, if in less spectacular fashion, in recent weeks.

My strongest evidence was my proprietary measure of "risk-adjusted margin" or RAM. A brief explanation from my January post as to why RAM is such a useful metric for estimating the level of purely speculative, rather than commercial, activity:

There is a way to estimate the degree to which certain commodity price increases are being driven by speculation rather than commercial supply and demand. This is to look at the "cost" of speculating, as measured by the amount of margin (or collateral) a speculator must put up on the exchange to open a position in a given commodity futures contract. The less it costs to speculate, the more potential for speculation.

RAM goes one step further than simply looking at exchange margin requirements, as it adjusts the margin for the implied volatility of the commodity in question, as observed in the options markets.

Based on current margin numbers, the apparent up-front "cost" of speculating in soybeans is very low, whereas that of speculating in crude oil is high. But crude oil prices are normally much more volatile than soybeans.

Looking at the metals, it currently appears much less "costly" to speculate in gold than in silver. But that can be misleading too, as silver tends to be 2-3 times more volatile than gold.

By taking into account volatilities, RAM provides a much better guide as to which commodities might be attracting speculative interest or not. Adjusting for risk, the "cost" of speculating in copper or wheat is currently quite high, rather than moderate.

[Excerpt ends — full article at the Amphora Report.]